Founding Fathers Getting Wasted Delcaration of Independence Funny

June 26, 2022 Post a Comment

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Quotes tagged as "founding-fathers" Showing 1-30 of 96

"One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government."
― Ron Paul

"Most gun control arguments miss the point. If all control boils fundamentally to force, how can one resist aggression without equal force? How can a truly "free" state exist if the individual citizen is enslaved to the forceful will of individual or organized aggressors? It cannot."
― Tiffany Madison

"How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"
― Thomas Jefferson

"Give me liberty or give me death."

[From a speech given at Saint John's Church in Richmond, Virginia on March 23, 1775 to the Virginia House of Burgesses; as first published in print in 1817 in William Wirt's Life and Character of Patrick Henry.]"
― Patrick Henry, Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death

"The answer to 1984 is 1776"
― Alex E. Jones

"For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man, we must entertain each other in brotherly affection, we must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness, and truth then formerly we have been acquainted with."
― John Winthrop

"Yes here's to the founding fathers—slave-owners, British citizens who didn't want to pay taxes..."
― David Mazzucchelli, Asterios Polyp

"Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion." The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination."
― Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson

"But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. If it be said, his testimony in a court of justice cannot be relied on, reject it then, and be the stigma on him. Constraint may make him worse by making him a hypocrite, but it will never make him a truer man. It may fix him obstinately in his errors, but will not cure them. Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error."
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

"Rousseau already observed that this form of government is more accurately an 'elective aristocracy' because in practice the people are not in power at all. Instead we're allowed to decide who holds power over us. It's also important to realise this model was originally designed to exclude society's rank and file. Take the American Constitution: historians agree it 'was intrinsically an aristocratic document designed to check the democratic tendencies of the period'. It was never the American Founding Fathers' intention for the general populace to play an active role in politics. Even now, though any citizen can run for public office, it's tough to win an election without access to an aristocratic network of donors and lobbyists. It's not surprising that American 'democracy' exhibits dynastic tendencies—think of the Kennedys, the Clintons, the Bushes.

Time and again we hope for better leaders, but all too often those hopes are dashed. The reason, says Professor Keltner, is that power causes people to lose the kindness and modesty that got them elected, or they never possessed those sterling qualities in the first place. In a hierarchically organised society, the Machiavellis are one step ahead. They have the ultimate secret weapon to defeat their competition.

They're shameless."
― Rutger Bregman, De meeste mensen deugen: een nieuwe geschiedenis van de mens

"Principles of Liberty
1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law.
2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong.
3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders.
4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained.
5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible.
6. All men are created equal.
7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things.
8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law.
10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people.
11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical.
12. The United States of America shall be a republic.
13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers.
14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure.
15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations.
16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial.
17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power.
18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.
19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people.
20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority.
21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom.
22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men.
23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education.
24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong.
25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none."

26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity.
27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest.
28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race."
― Founding Fathers

"The president's title as proposed by the senate was the most superlatively ridiculous thing I ever heard of. It is a proof the more of the justice of the character given by Doctr. Franklin of my friend [John Adams]: 'Always an honest man, often a great one, but sometimes absolutely mad'."
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 15: March 1789 to November 1789

"The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I."
― Thomas Jefferson

"To the extent the divine source and inalienability of our rights are purported to be factual, history has proved our Founding Fathers plainly wrong: Every right has, in fact, been alienated by governments since the beginning of time. Within a generation of the establishment of our nation, the Founding Fathers rescinded virtually every right they previously declared unalienable. John Adams, one of the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, alienated the right to speak freely and express dissenting views when, as president, he enforced the Alien and Sedition Acts against his political opponents—with Hamilton's support. (Perhaps Hamilton's God had not given "sacred rights" to Jeffersonians!) Another of the drafters, Jefferson himself, alienated the most basic of rights—to the equal protection of the laws, based on the "truth" that "all men are created equal"—when he helped to write (and strengthen) Virginia's "Slave Code," just a few years after drafting the Declaration of Independence. The revised code denied slaves the right to liberty and to the pursuit of happiness by punishing attempted escape with "outlawry" or death. Jefferson personally suspected that "the blacks … are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." In other words, they were endowed by their Creator not with equality but with inferiority.

There is no right that has not been suspended or trampled during times of crisis and war, even by our greatest presidents. ...

I wish there were an intellectually satisfying argument for the divine source of rights, as our Founding Fathers tried to put forth. Tactically, that would be the strongest argument liberals could make, especially in America, where many hold a strong belief in an intervening God. But we cannot offer this argument, because many liberals do not believe in concepts like divine hands. We believe in separation of church and state. We are pragmatists, utilitarians, empiricists, secularists, and (God forgive me!) moral relativists. We are skeptical of absolutes (as George Bernard Shaw cynically quipped: "The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.")."
― Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Liberalism in an Age of Extremism: or, Why I Left the Left But Can't Join the Right

"…I always support secession, and I think that the founders made a mistake by not having that in the Constitution…"
― Ron Paul

"History is not a bedtime story. It is a comprehensive engagement with often obscure documents and books no longer read—books shelved in old archives, and fragile pamphlets contemporaneous with the subject under study—all of which reflect a world view not ours."
― Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr

"The existence of the corporation, as we have it with us today, was never dreamed of by the fathers . . .The corporation of today has invaded every department of business, and it's powerful but invisible hand is felt in almost all activities of life . . . The effect of this change upon the American people is radical and rapid.

The individual is fast disappearing as a business factor and in his stead is this new device, the modern corporation . . . The influence of this change upon character cannot be overestimated. The businessman at one time gave his individuality, stamped his mental and moral characteristics upon the business he conducted . . .

Today the business once transacted by individuals in every community is in the control of corporations, and many of the men who once conducted an independent business are gathered into the organization, and all personal identity, and all individualities lost."
― Robert Marion La Follette

"Trump is a complete package of the Founders' greatest fears—delusions of royalty, appeals to the basest appetites of the polity, populism over small-r republicanism, and vulnerability to the blandishments of foreign powers who so obviously are welcome to corrupt him with gifts or flattery of his ravenous ego.

To date, his actions have had the possible check of the 2020 election hanging over him, which has influenced him whether or not he admits it. Trump needs to win reelection to continue his nation-state level, god-tier grifting and to avoid prosecution.

He thrives not on a competition of ideas but on the division of the country. Our parties and politics will follow him down, fighting a dirtier, more savage battle until we've forgotten what it means to share even the most common baseline with our fellow Americans. The cold civil war is warming by the day. He's not the only centrifugal political force, but he's the most powerful.

This will only accelerate if he is reelected. There will be no end to his ambition and no check on his actions. He will conclude that he's the winner who wins, and for him that will justify everything in his catalog of errors and terrors. We've learned there is no bottom with Trump, no level to which he won't sink, no excess he won't embrace."
― Rick Wilson, Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump — And Democrats from Themselves

"The founding fathers of America, if alive today, would be thrown in prison and be charged as domestic terrorist by todays government."
― James Thomas Kesterson Jr

"Both the European Union and the United States are in some sense the heirs of Rome. Like Rome, the United States is founded on a republican myth of liberation from a tyrannical oppressor. Just as the Rape of Lucretia led to the overthrow of the last Etruscan king, so the Boston Tea Party led to the overthrow of the British crown. The Founding Fathers of the United States sought quite literally to create a New Rome, with, for instance, a clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government—with the legislative branch called, as in Rome, the Senate. They even debated whether the executive branch would not be better represented, as in Rome, by two consuls rather than the president that they eventually settled for. The extended period of relative peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War has been dubbed the Pax Americana ['American Peace'], after the Pax Romana which perdured from the accession of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in 180 CE. The United Kingdom's departure from the European Union can be accounted for, in part, by the ghost of the nineteenth century Pax Britannica, when the British Empire was not merely a province of Rome but a Rome unto herself."
― Neel Burton, The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist

"Whether a candidate promises to sweep the stables, as [Andrew] Jackson did, or drain the swamp, the passion for disruption in the name of connecting the people to their government is rich and long-standing.

The problem with downgrading the sausage-making skills is that government is still a sausage-making enterprise in which ugly compromises are made for partial progress in the name of the greater good. This is not a theory. It is the instruction left by the framers in the Constitution: Make sausage."
― John Dickerson, The Hardest Job in the World: The American Presidency

"The one right that no founding father ever fought for was 'equality'. When I discovered this, I was appalled that these great men could not understand that 'equality' should come before all else because without 'equality' the other rights are useless. It's like giving someone a crippled horse."
― James Thomas Kesterson Jr

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private virtue, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics."
― John Adams

"At their Entertainments there is no Conversation that is agreable. There is no Modesty—No Attention to one another. They talk very loud, very fast, and alltogether. If they ask you a Question, before you can utter 3 Words of your Answer, they will break out upon you, again—and talk away."
― John Adams

"The principles upon which this nation was founded will always eclipse any party that claims to stand for those principles."
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

"Only by moving out of fear and hatred can we
truly manifest the vision of our founders--
not their actual vision, because they were limited, too,
but the theoretical vision to which they aspired.

The 'other side' is not the enemy.
Fear and hatred are the enemies."
― Shellen Lubin

"In history class, instead of memorizing the order of the presidents, we played fuck/marry/kill with the Founding Fathers and decided to kill all of them."
― K-Ming Chang, Bestiary

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