Founders Quotes

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.  — Thomas Jefferson

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people. — John Adams

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

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.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

– James Madison

The father of the US Constitution — James Madison. He along with Governor Morris from New York were the main draftsmen of the Constitution. He would also become the fourth president of the United States.

Madison wrote Federalist Paper #10, in which he explained how a large country with many different interests and factions could support republican values better than a small country dominated by a few special interests. Now many would say we have become a large country dominated by many special interests.