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"It should be the highest ambition of
every American to extend his views beyond himself, and
to bear in mind that his conduct will not only affect
himself, his country, and his immediate posterity; but
that its influence may be co-extensive with the world,
and stamp political happiness or misery on ages yet
unborn." -- George Washington |
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A fine genius in his own country is like
gold in the mine
Benjamin
Franklin,
Poor Richard's Almanack
1733 |
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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 |
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"The dignity and stability of
government in all its branches, the morals of the
people, and every blessing of society depend so
much upon an upright and skillful administration
of justice, that the judicial power ought to be
distinct from both the legislative and executive,
and independent upon both, that so it may be a
check upon both, and both should be checks upon
that." --John Adams
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Franklin,
Benjamin Proposals Relating to the Education
of Youth in Pensilvania
1749
Topic: Education
The good Education of
Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages,
as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both
of private Families and of Common-wealths.
Almost all Governments have therefore made it a
principal Object of their Attention, to
establish and endow with proper Revenues, such
Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the
succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the
Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their
Country. |
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Adams, John
Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law
1756
Topic: Education
It should be your care,
therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our
children and exalt their courage; to accelerate
and animate their industry and activity; to
excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness,
abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an
ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty,
and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel
and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their
lives. |
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Adams, John
Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law
1765
Topic: Education
Liberty cannot be
preserved without a general knowledge among the
people, who have a right, from the frame of
their nature, to knowledge, as their great
Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given
them understandings, and a desire to know; but
besides this, they have a right, an
indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine
right to that most dreaded and envied kind of
knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct
of their rulers. |
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Adams,
Samuel letter to James Warren
November 4, 1775
Topic: Education
No people will tamely
surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily
subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is
preservd. On the Contrary, when People are
universally ignorant, and debauchd in their
Manners, they will sink under their own weight
without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
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Adams, John
Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Education
Laws for the liberal
education of the youth, especially of the lower
class of the people, are so extremely wise and
useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no
expense for this purpose would be thought
extravagant. |
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Adams, John
Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Education
Wisdom and knowledge, as
well as virtue, diffused generally among the
body of the people, being necessary for the
preservation of their rights and liberties, and
as these depend on spreading the opportunities
and advantages of education in the various parts
of the country, and among the different orders
of people, it shall be the duty of legislators
and magistrates... to cherish the interest of
literature and the sciences, and all seminaries
of them. |
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George
Washington letter to George Chapman
December 15, 1784
Topic: Education
The best means of forming
a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be
found in the right education of youth. Without
this foundation, every other means, in my
opinion, must fail. |
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Adams, John
Defense of the Constitutions
1787
Topic: Education
Children should be
educated and instructed in the principles of
freedom. |
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Edward Carrington
January 16, 1787
Topic: Education
Cherish, therefore, the
spirit of our people, and keep alive their
attention. Do not be too severe upon their
errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Edward Carrington
January 16, 1787
Topic: Education
Cherish, therefore, the
spirit of our people, and keep alive their
attention. Do not be too severe upon their
errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.
If once they become inattentive to the public
affairs, you and I, and Congress, and
Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all
become wolves. |
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The Northwest
Ordinance
July 23, 1787
Topic: Education
Religion, morality and
knowledge being necessary to good government and
the happiness of mankind, schools and the means
of education shall forever be encouraged.
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Webster,
Noah On Education of Youth in America
1790
Topic: Education
It is an object of vast
magnitude that systems of education should be
adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a
knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the
minds of the American youth the principles of
virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just
and liberal ideas of government and with an
inviolable attachment to their own country.
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Wilson,
James Of the Study of the Law in the United
States
Circa, 1790
Topic: Education
Law and liberty cannot
rationally become the objects of our love,
unless they first become the objects of our
knowledge. |
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Washington,
George First Annual Message
January 8, 1790
Topic: Education
Knowledge is, in every
country, the surest basis of public happiness.
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Paine,
Thomas Rights of Man, part 2
1792
Topic: Education
A nation under a well
regulated government, should permit none to
remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and
aristocratical government only that requires
ignorance for its support. |
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Washington,
George letter to the Commissioners of the
District of Columbia
January 28, 1795
Topic: Education
[W]e ought to deprecate
the hazard attending ardent and susceptible
minds, from being too strongly, and too early
prepossessed in favor of other political
systems, before they are capable of appreciating
their own. |
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Joel Barlow
December 10, 1807
Topic: Education
People generally have more
feeling for canals and roads than education.
However, I hope we can advance them with equal
pace. |
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Trustees for the Lottery of
East Tennessee College
May 6, 1810
Topic: Education
No one more sincerely
wishes the spread of information among mankind
than I do, and none has greater confidence in
its effect towards supporting free and good
government. |
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Colonel Charles Yancey
January 6, 1816
Topic: Education
If a nation expects to be
ignorant - and free - in a state of
civilization, it expects what never was and
never will be. |
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Jose Correa de Serra
November 25, 1817
Topic: Education
To all of which is added a
selection from the elementary schools of
subjects of the most promising genius, whose
parents are too poor to give them further
education, to be carried at the public expense
through the college and university. The object
is to bring into action that mass of talents
which lies buried in poverty in every country,
for want of the means of development, and thus
give activity to a mass of mind, which, in
proportion to our population, shall be double or
treble of what it is in most countries.
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Jefferson,
Thomas Report of the Commissioners for the
University of Virginia
August 4, 1818
Topic: Education
To give to every citizen
the information he needs for the transaction of
his own business; To enable him to calculate for
himself, and to express and preserve his ideas,
his contracts and accounts, in writing; To
improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
To understand his duties to his neighbors and
country, and to discharge with competence the
functions confided to him by either; To know his
rights; to exercise with order and justice those
he retains; to choose with discretion the
fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice
their conduct with diligence, with candor, and
judgment; And, in general, to observe with
intelligence and faithfulness all the social
relations under which he shall be placed.
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Joseph C. Cabell
January 22, 1820
Topic: Education
All the States but our own
are sensible that knowlege is power.
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Jefferson,
Thomas letter to Joseph Cabell
November 28, 1820
Topic: Education
The truth is that the want
of common education with us is not from our
poverty, but from the want of an orderly system.
More money is now paid for the education of a
part than would be paid for that of the whole if
systematically arranged. |
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Madison,
James letter to W.T. Barry
August 4, 1822
Topic: Education
A popular Government,
without popular information, or the means of
acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a
Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will
forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean
to be their own Governors, must arm themselves
with the power which knowledge gives.
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Madison,
James letter to W.T. Barry
August 4, 1822
Topic: Education
What spectacle can be more
edifying or more seasonable, than that of
Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other
for their mutual & surest support?
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Madison,
James letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle
March 29, 1826
Topic: Education
The best service that can
be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving
it liberty, is in diffusing the mental
improvement equally essential to the
preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing.
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Washington,
George address to the New York Legislature
June 26, 1775
Topic: Citizenship
When we assumed the
Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and
we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the
happy hour when the establishment of American
Liberty, upon the most firm and solid
foundations shall enable us to return to our
Private Stations in the bosom of a free,
peacefully and happy Country.
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Adams,
Samuel in the Boston Gazette
April 16, 1781
Topic: Citizenship
Let each citizen remember
at the moment he is offering his vote that he is
not making a present or a compliment to please
an individual - or at least that he ought not so
to do; but that he is executing one of the most
solemn trusts in human society for which he is
accountable to God and his country.
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Washington,
George letter to the Hebrew Congregation of
Newport, Rhode Island
September 9, 1790
Topic: citizenship
The citizens of the United
States of America have the right to applaud
themselves for having given to mankind examples
of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of
imitation. All possess alike liberty of
conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is
now no more that toleration is spoken of as if
it were by the indulgence of one class of
citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of
their inherent natural rights, for happily the
Government of the United States, which gives to
bigotry no sanction, to persecution no
assistance, requires only that they who live
under its protection should demean themselves as
good citizens in giving it on all occasions
their effectual support. |
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Washington,
George Farewell Address
September 19, 1796
Topic: Citizenship
Citizens by birth or
choice of a common country, that country has a
right to concentrate your affections. The name
of American, which belongs to you, in your
national capacity, must always exalt the just
pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation
derived from local discriminations.
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Jay,
John Federalist No. 4
Topic: Government
Wisely, therefore, do
they consider union and a good national
government as necessary to put and keep them
in such a situation as, instead of inviting
war, will tend to repress and discourage it.
That situation consists in the best possible
state of defense, and necessarily depends on
the government, the arms, and the resources
of the country. |
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Hamilton, Alexander Federalist No. 15
Topic: Government
Why has government
been instituted at all? Because the passions
of men will not conform to the dictates of
reason and justice without constraint.
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Hamilton, Alexander Federalist No. 26
Topic: Government
The citizens of
America have too much discernment to be
argued into anarchy. and I am much mistaken
if experience has not wrought a deep and
solemn conviction in the public mind that
greater energy of government is essential to
the welfare and prosperity of the community.
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Wilson,
James .
Topic: Government
The pyramid of
government-and a republican government may
well receive that beautiful and solid
form-should be raised to a dignified
altitude: but its foundations must, of
consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep.
The authority, the interests, and the
affections of the people at large are the
only foundation, on which a superstructure
proposed to be at once durable and
magnificent, can be rationally erected.
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Franklin, Benjamin On that Odd Letter of
the Drum
April, 1730
Topic: Government
That wise Men have in
all Ages thought Government necessary for
the Good of Mankind; and, that wise
Governments have always thought Religion
necessary for the well ordering and
well-being of Society, and accordingly have
been ever careful to encourage and protect
the Ministers of it, paying them the highest
publick Honours, that their Doctrines might
thereby meet with the greater Respect among
the common People. |
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Adams,
John draft of a Newspaper Communication
Circa August, 1770
Topic: Government
Human government is
more or less perfect as it approaches nearer
or diverges farther from the imitation of
this perfect plan of divine and moral
government. |
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Paine,
Thomas Common Sense
1776
Topic: Government
Society in every state
is a blessing, but government, even in its
best state, is but a necessary evil; in its
worst state an intolerable one; for when we
suffer or are exposed to the same miseries
by a government, which we might expect in a
country without government, our calamity is
heightened by reflecting that we furnish the
means by which we suffer.
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Adams,
John Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Government
Upon this point all
speculative politicians will agree, that the
happiness of society is the end of
government, as all divines and moral
philosophers will agree that the happiness
of the individual is the end of man. From
this principle it will follow that the form
of government which communicates ease,
comfort, security, or, in one word,
happiness, to the greatest numbers of
persons, and in the greatest degree, is the
best. |
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Adams,
John Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Government
If there is a form of
government, then, whose principle and
foundation is virtue, will not every sober
man acknowledge it better calculated to
promote the general happiness than any other
form? |
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Adams,
John Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Government
Fear is the foundation
of most governments; but it is so sordid and
brutal a passion, and renders men in whose
breasts it predominates so stupid and
miserable, that Americans will not be likely
to approve of any political institution
which is founded on it. |
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Adams,
John Thoughts on Government
1776
Topic: Government
Government is
instituted for the common good; for the
protection, safety, prosperity, and
happiness of the people; and not for profit,
honor, or private interest of any one man,
family, or class of men; therefore, the
people alone have an incontestable,
unalienable, and indefeasible right to
institute government; and to reform, alter,
or totally change the same, when their
protection, safety, prosperity, and
happiness require it. |
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Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776
Topic: Government
Governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.
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Washington, George letter to John
Augustine Washington
May 31, 1776
Topic: Government
To form a new
Government, requires infinite care, and
unbounded attention; for if the foundation
is badly laid the superstructure must be
bad. |
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Paine,
Thomas The American Crisis, No. 5
March 21, 1778
Topic: Government
The Grecians and
Romans were strongly possessed of the spirit
of liberty but not the principle, for at the
time they were determined not to be slaves
themselves, they employed their power to
enslave the rest of mankind.
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Jefferson, Thomas letter to Maria Cosway
1786
Topic: Government
If our country, when
pressed with wrongs at the point of the
bayonet, had been governed by its heads
instead of its hearts, where should we have
been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as
Haman's. |
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Jefferson, Thomas letter to Abigail
Adams
February 22, 1787
Topic: Government
The spirit of
resistance to government is so valuable on
certain occasions, that I wish it to be
always kept alive. It will often be
exercised when wrong, but better so than not
to be exercised at all. I like a little
rebellion now and then. It is like a storm
in the atmosphere. |
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Madison, James Federalist No. 10
November 23, 1787
Topic: Government
The diversity in the
faculties of men from which the rights of
property originate, is not less an
insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of
interests. The protection of these faculties
is the first object of government.
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Madison, James Federalist No. 10
November 23, 1787
Topic: Government
Among the numerous
advantages promised by a well-constructed
Union, none deserves to be more accurately
developed than its tendency to break and
control the violence of faction.
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Madison, James letter to Thomas
Jefferson
October 24, 1787
Topic: Government
The great desideratum
in Government is, so to modify the
sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently
neutral between different parts of the
Society to controul one part from invading
the rights of another, and at the same time
sufficiently controuled itself, from setting
up an interest adverse to that of the entire
Society. |
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Hamilton, Alexander and Madison, James
Federalist No. 62
1788
Topic: Government
No government, any
more than an individual, will long be
respected without being truly respectable;
nor be truly respectable, without possessing
a certain portion of order and stability.
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Hamilton, Alexander Remarks in the New
York Ratifying Convention
June, 1788
Topic: Government
The true principle of
government is this - make the system
compleat in its structure; give a perfect
proportion and balance to its parts; and the
powers you give it will never affect your
security. |
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Madison, James Federalist No. 49
February 5, 1788
Topic: Government
[I]t is the reason
alone, of the public, that ought to control
and regulate the government.
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Madison, James Federalist No. 49
February 5, 1788
Topic: Government
It may be considered
as an objection inherent in the principle,
that as every appeal to the people would
carry an implication of some defect in the
government, frequent appeals would in great
measure deprive the government of that
veneration which time bestows on every
thing, and without which perhaps the wisest
and freest governments would not possess the
requisite stability. |
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Madison, James Federalist No. 51
February 8, 1788
Topic: Government
If men were angels, no
government would be necessary. If angels
were to govern men, neither external nor
internal controls on government would be
necessary. In framing a government which is
to be administered by men over men, the
great difficulty lies in this: you must
first enable the government to control the
governed; and in the next place, oblige it
to control itself. |
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Madison, James Federalist No. 37
January 11, 1788
Topic: Government
Stability in
government is essential to national
character and to the advantages annexed to
it, as well as to that repose and confidence
in the minds of the people, which are among
the chief blessings of civil society.
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Madison, James Federalist No. 37
January 11, 1788
Topic: Government
Energy in government
is essential to that security against
external and internal danger and to that
prompt and salutary execution of the laws
which enter into the very definition of good
government. Stability in government is
essential to national character and to the
advantages annexed to it, as well as to that
repose and confidence in the minds of the
people, which are among the chief blessings
of civil society. |
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Hamilton, Alexander speech to the New
York Ratifying Convention
June, 1788
Topic: Government
The history of ancient
and modern republics had taught them that
many of the evils which those republics
suffered arose from the want of a certain
balance, and that mutual control
indispensable to a wise administration. They
were convinced that popular assemblies are
frequently misguided by ignorance, by sudden
impulses, and the intrigues of ambitious
men; and that some firm barrier against
these operations was necessary. They,
therefore, instituted your Senate.
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Hamilton, Alexander speech to the New
York Ratifying Convention
June, 1788
Topic: Government
I will venture to
assert that no combination of designing men
under heaven will be capable of making a
government unpopular which is in its
principles a wise and good one, and vigorous
in its operations. |
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