The words of America's Founders and great thinkers on liberty, religion, justice, and the Constitution — as relevant today as when they were first spoken.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are a gift of God?
It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.
Religion and morality are the essential pillars of civil society.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.
The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.
Individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending against all hazards.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.'
The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief.
To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.
Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.
Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.
Tolerating imperfections is the price of freedom.
The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is, to construe them according to the sense of the terms, and the intention of the parties.
If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.