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| --Thomas Paine
on the Constitution |
"It will be first necessary to define
what is meant by a Constitution. It is not sufficient that we adopt
the word; we must fix also a standard signification to it. A constitution
is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal, but
a real existence; and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form,
there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government,
and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution
of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting
a government. It is the body of elements, to which you can refer,
and quote article by article; and which contains the principles on which
the government shall be established, the manner in which it shall be organized,
the powers it shall have, the mode of elections, the duration of parliaments,
or by what other name such bodies may be called; the powers which the executive
part of the government shall have; and, in fine, everything that relates
to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles
on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound.
A constitution, therefore, is to a government, what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution." |
| - Lee Iacocca,
Chairman of Chrysler Corp. |
Addressing John Hopkins
University
1992 Graduating Class My generation did something to yours that was never done to us or to any other generation of Americans. We stiffed you, I'm sorry to say. We didn't pay our bills. |
| -- Senator Everett Dirksen,
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Senate Minority Leader,
1959-1969 A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking about real money. |
| -- Malcom Forbes | When you cease to dream, you cease to live. |
| -- India Edwards,
Pulling No Punches, 1977 |
Every generation of Americans has wanted more material wealth, more luxury for the next generation. In my opinion the time has come when we must hope our children and their children ad infinitum will want from life more than material success. They must have enough of that to ensure a roof, clothing, food and some recreation, but if we are to survive for another two hundred years, we must change our way of life. |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson,
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I hate this shallow Americanism which hopes to get rich by credit, to get knowledge by raps on midnight tables, to learn the economy of the mind by phrenology, or skill without study, or mastery without apprenticeship. |
| -- Elbert Hubbard,
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From The Philistine magazine published from 1895-1915 The only foes that threaten America are the enemies at home, and these are ignorance, superstition and incompetence. |
| -- Abraham Lincoln,1837 | At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be it author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. |
| -- Abraham Lincoln, 1859 | The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of a free society. |
| -- John F. Kennedy |
From a speech honoring Nobel
Prize winners at
the White House, April 29, 1962 I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone. |
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Thomas Jefferson,
a champion of the republican philosophy, has many quotes that are just
as poignant today as when he wrote them. Several deal directly with
the conflict of individual rights versus the necessity of government, the
need for some consolidation of power versus the potential for abuse of
that power.
Mr. Jefferson personifies all of the emotion and foresight that is available to each one of us. He truly was a man of considerable vision and compassion. He lived and embodied the virtues and disciplines that are still the foundations of our country today. |
| A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. | |
| If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. | |
| Honesty if the first chapter of the book of wisdom. | |
| I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industries. | |
| The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government. | |
| If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption. | |
| If the public debt should once more be swelled to a formidable size, . . . we shall be committed to the English career of debt, corruption and rottenness, closing with revolution. | |
| I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. | |
| The bulk of mankind are schoolboys through life. Education is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power. | |
| Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial re-enactments; because a constant hold by the nation of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not to wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted to be free. | |
| To introduce the people into every department of government . . . is the only way to insure a long-continued and honest administration. | |
| Responsibility is a tremendous engine in a free government. | |
| Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers . . . alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. | |
| My conviction [is], that should things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights. | |
| Funding, I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their subsistence, unencumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life. |