This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Government | Little | Luck | Opportunity | Patience | Principles | Public | Suffering | War | Luck | Government | Winning |
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Commerce | Little | Principles | War | Commerce |
I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for.
Authority | Confidence | Doubt | Events | Government | Growth | Peace | People | Principles | Public | Safe | Time | Government | Crisis |
It is, therefore, with the sincerest pleasure I have observed on the part of the British government various manifestations of a just and friendly disposition towards us; we wish to cultivate peace and friendship with all nations, believing that course most conducive to the welfare of our own; it is natural that these friendships should bear some proportion to the common interests of the parties.
Little | Principles |
It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
Good | Peace | Principles | Time |
The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.
Practice | Principles |
In war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them
Experience | Mother | Principles | Reflection | Space | Will |
Leave all the afternoon for exercise and recreation, which are as necessary as reading. I will rather say more necessary because health is worth more than learning.
Principles | Surrender | Wealth |
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, as both should be checks upon that.
Desire | Principles | Society | Society |
Planting is one of my great amusements, and even of those things which can only be for posterity, for a Septuagenary has no right to count on anything but annuals.
Government | Majority | Principles | Rights | Will | Government |
Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.
It astonishes me to find... [that so many] of our countrymen... should be contented to live under a system which leaves to their governors the power of taking from them the trial by jury in civil cases, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce, the habeas corpus laws, and of yoking them with a standing army. This is a degeneracy in the principles of liberty... which I [would not have expected for at least] four centuries. - to William Stephens Smith, 1788. (*) FE 5:3
Government | Principles | Will | Government |
Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.
Hope | Principles |
It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.
Authority | Body | Men | Principles | Rights |
Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them.
Duty | Freedom | Important | Little | Power | Principles | Revolution | Right | Search | Think |
The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.
Authority | Government | Growth | Peace | Principles | Safe | Time | Government |
The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing, against the principles and form of our Constitution. An institution like this, penetrating by its branches every part of the Union, acting by command and in phalanx, may, in a critical moment, upset the government. I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries. What an obstruction could not this bank of the United States, with all its branch banks, be in time of war! It might dictate to us the peace we should accept, or withdraw its aids. Ought we then to give further growth to an institution so powerful, so hostile?
Fable | Government | Little | Principles | Government |
It becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons, whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance.
Degeneracy | Freedom | Power | Principles | System | Trial |
Nothing is so mistaken as the supposition that a person is to extricate himself from a difficulty by intrigue, by chicanery, by dissimulation, by trimming, by an untruth, by an injustice. This increases the difficulties tenfold; and those who pursue these methods get themselves so involved at length that they can turn no way by their infamy becomes more exposed.
Important | Justice | Peace | Policy | Principles |