Quotes About Founding

#1. The Founding Fathers of America never intended to stop people expressing their faith in the public square. But unfortunately that is the way it is happened.

John Lennox

#2. There was never a promise that race relations in America would be entirely resolved during my presidency or anybody's presidency. I mean, this has been a running thread - and - and fault line in American life and American politics since its founding.

Barack Obama

#3. [O]ur Founding Fathers enshrined a constitutional separation of powers for the ages undeluded by the fantasy that angels would win elections.

Bruce Fein

#4. when faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution's original meaning.

Ralph A. Rossum

#5. The redemption of Zion is more than the purchase or recovery of lands, the building of cities, or even the founding of nations. It is the conquest of the heart, the subjugation of the soul, the sanctifying of the flesh, the purifying and ennobling of the passions.

Orson F. Whitney

#6. America is a living idea. It isn't only the tenets of its founding, but also the terms of its future. Every day, we make America. Seeking to preserve and enshrine one vision of this country from one period of its past robs it of what makes it magical: its infinite possibility for adjustment.

Charles M. Blow

#7. The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

Dan Savage

#8. Our Founding Fathers drafted the Bill of Rights to ensure that We the People could determine how best to protect our communities.

Mike Quigley

#9. While confronting the problems of the present, I often find myself thinking back to the world of books as it was experienced by the Founding Fathers and the philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Robert Darnton

#10. Plenty of gun opponents have pointed out the obvious: that the Founding Fathers could never have envisioned the kinds of 'arms' that exist today - Washington, Jefferson, and the rest had never even seen a bullet. Musket balls for guns that required constant reloading were the 'arms' of the day.

Kurt Eichenwald

#11. John Adams, by then one of the country's founding fathers, wrote to a friend: I know not why we should blush to confess that molasses was an essential ingredient in American independence. Many great events have proceeded from much smaller causes.

Tom Standage

#12. It is false to suggest that Thomas Jefferson or any other Founding Father believed in a legal barrier to God in the public square.

Newt Gingrich

#13. 'Forbes' has championed entrepreneurism since its founding.

Michael Perlis

#14. I rise in support of the separation of powers as established by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution. The Constitution clearly delegates the power to deal with criminal matters, like the use of drugs, to the States.

Dana Rohrabacher

#15. It is time to let America be America again. To return freedom to the people. To stand on our founding principles and reject the cynical politics of the Nanny State.

Rick Perry

#16. This election presents a stark choice - we can continue down the road of the Obama Democrats, more and more spending, debt and government control of the economy, or we can return to the founding principles of our nation - free markets, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty.

Ted Cruz

#17. The federal government is far larger than the Founding Fathers ever intended it to be. We have racked up over $16 trillion of debt through wasteful spending, and it is time that we cut that waste and start reducing the size of our government.

Matt Salmon

#18. The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

Ronald Reagan

#19. We have a President, perhaps for the very first time since the founding of our republic, who doesn't appear to believe that America is the greatest earthly force for good the world has ever known.

Sarah Palin

#20. I believe that only through a truly educated citizenry can the ideals that inspired the Founding Fathers of our nation be preserved and perpetuated.

David O. McKay

#21. Through training, practice, and a deep sense of optimism, architects see opportunities where others only see a void. This has been the driving principle behind Architecture for Humanity since our founding.

Cameron Sinclair

#22. It's an essential fight librarians are making, an age-old fight; yours is a battle for civilization. It's a fight for our country's founding values.

Jim Hightower

#23. Our children need to assimilate the wonder that is India when they are young, so that they imbibe the principles of our founding fathers and continue to build this great nation.

Shallu Jindal

#24. If the Founding Fathers and other patriots who fought during the Revolutionary War could see the United States today, I believe they would be proud of the path that the thirteen colonies, now fifty strong states, have taken since then.

John Linder

#25. Everybody knows that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the United States, a young father to be sure: only thirty at the time of the Constitutional Convention and just turned thirty-eight when he left behind his brilliant career as Secretary of the Treasury.

Edmund Morgan

#26. There's not much a newspaper reporter can do about dead men. But a newspaper reporter and a cop and a judge can deliver some justice. That's why the founding fathers wrote it up the way they did, I suppose. Life. Liberty. Pursuit of happiness. Everyone is entitled to those things.

Charlie LeDuff

#27. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly.

Hugo Black

#28. We have a tremendous lack of knowledge of how far we have gotten away from the Constitution of the United States. Democrats and Republicans alike have taken us away from the original intent. You see, I believe in this document as our founding fathers intended it.

Paul Broun

#29. Our Nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment: In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom.

George W. Bush

#30. Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in - the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill - and yet they neglected to include the right to vote.

Mo Rocca

#31. True religion, like our founding principles, requires that the rights of the disbeliever be equally acknowledged with those of the believer.

A. Powell Davies

#32. And if we are the ones not actively involved in electing those godly men and women and if people aren't involved in helping godly men in getting elected than we're going to have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our founding fathers intended and that's certainly isn't what God intended.

Katherine Harris

#33. The myth that the founding of American Republic was based on the philosophy of John Locke could only have been maintained, because the history of Leibniz's influence was suppressed.

Robert Trout

#34. I see happiness as a by-product. I don't think you can pursue happiness. I think that phrase is one of the very few mistakes the Founding Fathers made.

James Hillman

#35. There is no doubt where the founding fathers stood on this issue. They believed that people of faith should be permitted to express themselves in public. They believed that this country was big enough and free enough to allow expression of on enormous variety of views and beliefs.

John Cornyn

#36. Liberals are some of the most arrogant, condescending smart alecks, but they're just pure ignorant, and they fit the bill of people who have no love and no respect for the founding of this country.

Rush Limbaugh

#37. All too frequently, the knee jerk reaction to tragedies by the media and chattering class is to move to restrict our rights ... Our founding documents make it clear that our inalienable rights come from God and that the job of the government is to ensure and protect those God-given rights.

Dave Brat

#38. the worth of the soul is so much greater than what is first perceived. Equality and love for all became the founding basis

Jenni James

#39. Many entrepreneurs that made their fortunes by founding successful technology companies want to give back and solve the world's biggest problems on a grand scale. There is tremendous opportunity in this approach.

Peter Diamandis

#40. And so this added consideration - that she never get pregnant - contributed to the moderation of their coupling, which was almost always managed under conditions harsh enough to win the approval of New England's founding fathers

John Irving

#41. America is great not because it's a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

John Podhoretz

#42. The vision that the founding fathers had of rule of law and equality before the law and no one above the law, that is a very viable vision, but instead of that, we have quasi mob rule.

James Bovard

#43. China has no choice but to emulate the power of America's founding ideas and its journey through the universal values of democratic freedom and individual rights.

Patrick Mendis

#44. Thomas Jefferson declared, stating that he was speaking on behalf of the other founding fathers, ... (that) we should build a wall between the church and state.

Jimmy Carter

#45. The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers
a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

Shirley Chisholm

#46. The notion of a world government to defend our rights would have sent the founding fathers running for their muskets.

Pat Buchanan

#47. The Founding Fathers worried that 'some common impulse of passion' might lead many to subvert the rights of the few. It's a rational fear, one that is played out endlessly.

David Harsanyi

#48. The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.

Ron Paul

#49. In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head.

Adam Weishaupt

#50. We have enshrined in our founding documents and promoted the fundamental truth, all around the world, that the rights of all men, women and children ,not simply Americans come from God.

Marco Rubio

#51. Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

Todd Tiahrt

#52. [Benjamin Franklin]. Not only one of our nation's founding geniuses but a printer and publisher, too ... He knew that to form the soul of America, one must control the presses.

Matthew Pearl

#53. It is a well known and very important fact that America's founding fathers did not like taxation without representation. It is a lesser known and equally important fact that they did not much like taxation with representation.

John Kenneth Galbraith

#54. Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Joseph Sobran

#55. The press is the only institution that is truly accountable. The founding fathers put the First Amendment first for a reason.

Rupert Murdoch

#56. even if you count back only four or five generations, you have an enormous number of living biological relatives descended from those ancestors. This is why it's not very unusual if you are descended from George Washington or another founding father or mother.

James Peoples

#57. I was on a founding members of the Canadian theatre movement in the late 60's till the mid 70's and performed theatre from Halifax to Vancouver and all places in between.

Nick Mancuso

#58. Do or do not. There is no try, says Yoda, the bewitching philosopher warrior created by George Lucas in Star Wars. Yoda is quoted at least as often as the founding fathers on this topic.

Jerry I. Porras

#59. Goddard was not personally religious; his most immediate and consistent motivation was a desire for recognition as the founding genius of rocket science.

Kendrick Oliver

#60. If you talk to say any of the first 40 or 50 employees, they all feel like they were a part of the founding of the company.

Sam Altman

#61. But the reality of being American requires that a commitment to our founding principles must be renewed by personal discovery with each generation - actively, not passively - if the country is to remain true to its stated goals.

Adrian Brooks

#62. Unlike Saudi Arabia, Russia, and China, the United States was created by an enlightened band of Founding Fathers with a global vision for the new republic.

Patrick Mendis

#63. The European Union Treaty ... within a few years will lead to the creation of what the founding fathers of modern Europe dreamed of after the war, the United States of Europe.

Helmut Kohl

#64. If I were founding a university I would begin with a smoking room; next a dormitory; and then a decent reading room and a library. After that, if I still had more money that I couldn't use, I would hire a professor and get some text books.

Stephen Leacock

#65. Thousands of present day students, like many of our Founding Fathers, are being taught at home.

Ernest Istook

#66. The fact is, almost every year since the founding of these United States, our government has lived beyond its means.

Paul Gillmor

#67. The election of the Jewish people is the result of God's falling in love with Abraham and founding a family with him.

Meir Soloveichik

#68. Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.

Evan Bayh

#69. America has not been a story or a byword. That small community of Pilgrims prospered and, driven by the dreams and, yes, by the ideas of the Founding Fathers, went on to become a beacon to all the oppressed and poor of the world.

Ronald Reagan

#70. If man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.

Charles Darwin

#71. In the founding era of our country, it was not organized religion but personal faith that brought focus and unified the early leadership-maybe an unspoken faith in God, and certain values that came with that faith. So in that sense, we cannot discount, in my judgment, religious faith in politics.

Billy Graham

#72. There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds he becomes a founding father. The

Saul D. Alinsky

#73. The Founding Fathers were nothing more than a bunch of snobby English shits.

Donald Freed

#74. I always very much enjoyed arts and it was so central in my family, my mother was also an art teacher, as well as founding the Henson Company with my dad, there was a lot of art going on in our household.

Brian Henson

#75. Though Israel is charged with engaging in genocide against Palestinians, in the last 20 years, the number of Palestinians has doubled; and since Israel's founding in 1948, the Palestinian population has grown five-fold. It must surely rank as the least effective genocide in world history.

Dennis Prager

#76. Gangs have had connections to the U.S. Military in every period since the founding of the country.

Carter F. Smith

#77. You can look at founding father Alexander Hamilton nevertheless assuring - assuring - the countrymen in Federalist 78 that the role of the federal courts under the proposed Constitution would be limited.

Sam Brownback

#78. We are approaching a time when Christians, especially, may have to declare the social contract between Enlightenment rationalists and Biblical believers - which formed the basis of the constitution written at our nation's founding - null and void.

Cal Thomas

#79. When the Founding Fathers arrived here in Philadelphia to forge a new nation, they didn't come as Democrats or Republicans or to nominate a presidential candidate. They came as patriots who feared party politics.

Michael Bloomberg

#80. With the founding of Denishawn, Ted Shawn stated the artistic creed which was to guide the school, the company and, indeed, his whole life in dance.

Walter Terry

#81. Today's China is an artifact of an extended and contentious history while the relatively young American Republic is a daring project informed by the enlightenment philosophy espoused by the Founding Fathers.

Patrick Mendis

#82. Great companies don't just have one founding moment. They have many founding moments.

Jack Dorsey

#83. Congress was designed by the Founding Fathers to move slowly, precisely to avoid the sudden panic of a one-week solution that becomes a 20-year mess.

Newt Gingrich

#84. One of my pastor friends, and a local hero, is Mike Minter. Mike is the founding pastor of Reston Bible Church, where he has served for nearly four decades.

Mark Batterson

#85. Lincoln was not an intellectual, but no one in 200 years understood the language of the King James Bible or learned Blackstone's Laws of England, or Cicero, or the language of the Founding Fathers, better than he did.

Michael Ignatieff

#86. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).

Mark Leibovich

#87. Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

Gore Vidal

#88. Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat.

Thomas DiLorenzo

#89. Many voters think about the makeup of the Supreme Court when they are choosing a president. The justices deal not only with constitutional issues but also with social issues that were unknown to the founding fathers who wrote the Constitution more than 200 years ago.

Helen Thomas

#90. For the freedoms our founding fathers not only dreamed about, but made into reality. It is that same pursuit of freedom today that is helping to make our world a safer place.

John M. McHugh

#91. Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

Jon Stewart

#92. Freedom of religion, as the Founding Fathers saw it, was not just the right to associate oneself with a certain denomination but the right to disassociate without penalty. Belief or nonbelief was a matter of individual choice - a right underwritten in the basic charter of the nation's liberties.

Norman Cousins

#93. It's government's job to respect and protect the rights of the individual. That vision is centrally important to the principle put forth by the Founding Fathers. If you don't believe that, you shouldn't be in Congress.

Bill Sali

#94. Yes here's to the founding fathers - slave-owners, British citizens who didn't want to pay taxes ...

David Mazzucchelli

#95. Every American deserves their day in court. Every American is innocent until proven guilty. These are core values enshrined in our founding document - the United States Constitution.

John Garamendi

#96. Since its founding, Detroit has been a place of perpetual flames. Three times the city has suffered race riots and three times the city has burned to the ground. The city's flag acknowledges as much. Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus: We hope for better things; it shall rise from the ashes.

Charlie LeDuff

#97. First figure out your partners, then figure out what ideas to pursue. The most important thing isn't the market you target, the product you develop or the financing, but the founding team.

James C. Collins

#98. I do believe that it was through divine providence that the Founding Fathers drafted a document that created a government that didn't trust each other - hence the separation of powers. And then, to close the deal, the Bill of Rights was added to continue to protect individual rights and freedoms.

John Shimkus

#99. The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration of wealth " are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

Bill Moyers

#100. Discipline is aimed at formation for a specific end, and that end is determined by our founding narrative.

James K.A. Smith