“America’s forefathers had a vision of a spiritually enlightened utopia, in which freedom of thought, education of the masses, and scientific advancement would replace the darkness of outdated religious superstition.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
“America’s forefathers had a vision of a spiritually enlightened utopia, in which freedom of thought, education of the masses, and scientific advancement would replace the darkness of outdated religious superstition.”
― Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817
“In general, we have been too generous in the gift of office and power… to men who do not understand the genius of America and who have little awareness of the backgrounds of the American way of life…. Most of us will agree that it makes little difference where or when a man was born if he had this vivid sense of American history, if he has learned to put Country above Party. … if freedom means more than personal security and if he refuses to tolerate appeasement of tyranny as the price of peace.”
~McIlyar H. Lichliter,American Clergy and 33rd Degree Mason
“The Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”
~Hugo Black
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
― George Washington
“… rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual”
— Thomas Jefferson (Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany – 1819)
“I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817
“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
— John Quincy Adams (attributed to Adams, by his contemporaries)
“When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny.”
— (indirectly attributed to Thomas Jefferson in The Federalist. Also attributed to Samuel Adams and Thomas Paine. It is considered likely that this exact phrase probably originated in 1914, by John Basil Barnhill.)
“Knowledge and liberty are so prevalent in this country, that I do not believe that the United States would ever be disposed to establish one religious sect, and lay all others under legal disabilities. But as we know not what may take place hereafter, and any such test would be exceedingly injurious to the rights of free citizens, I cannot think it altogether superfluous to have added a clause, which secures us from the possibility of such oppression.”
~Founding Father, Oliver Wolcott, Connecticut Ratifying Convention, 9 January 1788