Us Founding Fathers Quotes

Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed.

I have sworn upon the altar of God Eternal, hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

Let us with Caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Lighthouses are more helpful than churches.

No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . . If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.

For an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

Take away from Genesis the belief that Moses was the author, on which only the strange believe that it is the word of God has stood, and there remains nothing of Genesis but an anonymous book of stories, fables, and traditionary or invented absurdities, or of downright lies.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash.

Arms discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property… Horrid mischief would ensue were the law-abiding deprived of the use of them.

The Christian Constitutional Society, its object is first: The support of the Christian religion. Second: The support of the United States.

The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God, like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs.

It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one.

I have examined all religions, and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

The office of reformer of the superstitions of a nation is ever dangerous.

Americans have the right and advantage of being armed – unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.

On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.

[L]iberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

It can not be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ!

The Bible: a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalise mankind.

I have sworn upon the altar of god.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, “that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it.

The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.

The great object is that every man be armed.

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

The people “have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge- I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.”

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths . . . ?

If “Thou shalt not covet,” and “Thou shalt not steal,” were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free.

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption

What has been the effect of [religious] coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth.

The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

July 4th ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion.

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual… Continue steadfast and, with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.

. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.

Now I will avow, that I then believed and now believe that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.

The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.

I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.

Cursed be all that learning that is contrary to the cross of Christ.

Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Saviour?

I wish it (Christianity) were more productive of good works … I mean real good works … not holy day keeping, sermon-hearing … or making long prayers, filled with flatteries and compliments despised by wise men, and much less capable of pleasing the Deity.

Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law… There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever.

Congress has no power to make any religious establishments.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty, may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped.

We beseech [God] to pardon our national and other transgressions.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.

Question with boldness even the existence of a god.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

We Recognize No Sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!

I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery.

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?

The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in providence, for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.

That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience.

It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendency of one sect over another.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can exist apart from religious principle.

Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.

I can’t tell Black people to fight a war that is Israel’s war. What kind of leader will you be, or should I be, to allow these babies Black, white and brown, to fight Israel’s war, because Zionists dominate the government of the United States of America and her banking system.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity

It is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws.

The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity.

We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter.

I … [rely] upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.

The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Why is it that, next to the birthday of the Savior of the world, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day (the 4th of July)? Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior?.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people… it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.

In regard to religion, mutual toleration in the different professions thereof is what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced, and both by precept and example inculcated on mankind.

I believe … that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its conduct in this.

The number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the state.

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

The rights essential to happiness. . . . We claim them from a higher source – from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth.

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men.