Cindy Lou

http://uscis.gov/graphics/aboutus/history/1790Act.htm

'Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. --George Washington
If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. --George Washington
“Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses.” --George Washington
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798
All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Robert Morris, December 25, 1783
History affords us many instances of the ruin of states, by the prosecution of measures ill suited to the temper and genius of their people. The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy... These measures never fail to create great and violent jealousies and animosities between the people favored and the people oppressed; whence a total separation of affections, interests, political obligations, and all manner of connections, by which the whole state is weakened. Benjamin Franklin, Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774
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. Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766
Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them. Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753
They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech. Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, July 9, 1722
As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others. Alexander Hamilton, speech to the New York Ratifying Convention, June, 1788
Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be too careful to exclude its influence. Alexander Hamilton, Pacificus, No. 6, July 17, 1793
If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, January 3, 1788
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; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Alexander Hamilton and Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 62, 1788
Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 1, October 27, 1787
The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 22, December 14, 1787
A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable. Thomas Jefferson, September 8, 1817
A rigid economy of the public contributions and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Lafayette, 1823
At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823
Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Hugh White, May 2, 1801
But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years. Thomas Jefferson, September 6, 1789
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787
Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dupont de Nemours, April 24, 1816
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever persuasion, religious or political. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
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, not longer susceptible of any definition. Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank, February 15, 1791
It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia Query 19, 1781
Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the spot of every wind. With such persons, gullability, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes a wreck. Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Smith, December 8, 1822
No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]. Thomas Jefferson, Draft Constitution for the State of Virginia, June, 1776
On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823
On every unauthoritative exercise of power by the legislature must the people rise in rebellion or their silence be construed into a surrender of that power to them? If so, how many rebellions should we have had already? Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 12, 1782
Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
"No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." -Thomas Jefferson
The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Spencer Roane, March 9, 1821
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Shelton Gilliam, June 19, 1808
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. Thomas Jefferson, letter to Abigail Adams, September 11, 1804