The 25 Best Quotes from America’s Founding Fathers About Governing America

If you’re having big issues in any area, one of the things it’s often smart to do is to go back to First Principles and see if you’re missing anything. Does that fix every problem? Nope, but you’d be surprised at how often your problems are a result of simply getting away from the basics that got you to where you are.

America certainly fits that definition. Although things have started veering back in the right direction since Donald Trump took office, the country has been badly off track for the last few decades and getting back to those ideals that made this country a success, to begin with, would certainly fix things – if we were actually willing to do it.

1) "[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." -- John Adams

2) "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -- John Adams

3) "The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity." -- John Adams

4) "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths." -- John Adams

5) "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." -- Samuel Adams

6) "They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Ben Franklin

7) "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." -- Ben Franklin

8) "I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth, I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer." -- Ben Franklin

9) "That government is best which governs the least because its people discipline themselves." -- Thomas Jefferson

10) "A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned — this is the sum of good government." -- Thomas Jefferson

11) "I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." -- Thomas Jefferson

12) "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." -- Thomas Jefferson

13) "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition." -- Thomas Jefferson

14) "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." -- Thomas Jefferson

15) "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." -- Thomas Jefferson

16) "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -- James Madison

17) "The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted." -- James Madison

18) "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State." -- James Madison

19) "If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself." -- James Madison

20) "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." -- James Madison

21) "Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." -- Tom Paine

22) "Beware the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry." -- Tom Paine

23) "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." -- Tom Paine

24) "Patriotism is as much a virtue as justice and is as necessary for the support of societies as natural affection is for the support of families." -- Benjamin Rush

25) "If we were to remove the Bible from public schools we would be wasting so much time punishing crimes and taking so little pains to prevent them." -- Benjamin Rush

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