"Instead of praying for just a few more republicans in Congress or a republican President to bring about salvation by laws, Christians should be praying that God will send revival. Only He can save us. So saith the Scripture." ~ Tom Pardue Sr. LtCol. U.S. Army (retired)

"In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." – Thomas Jefferson

"Those who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right are courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like." – Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." – Benjamin Franklin

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." – James Madison

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." – Thomas Jefferson (Letter to William Ludlow, 1824)

"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." – Alexander Hamilton (The Federalist; Feb.8, 1788)

"No government is respectable which is not just. Without unspotted purity of public faith, without sacred public principle, fidelity, and honor, no machinery of laws, can give dignity to political society." – Daniel Webster

"I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master." – Thomas Jefferson (Letter to David Hartley; 1787)

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." – George Washington

"Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be entrusted on any other foundation than religious principle, not any government secure which is not supported by moral habits.... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens." – Daniel Webster

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this; it connected, in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity." – John Quincy Adams

"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." – Patrick Henry

"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." – James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution

"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evil men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." – Noah Webster

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." – Thomas Jefferson

"No free man shall ever be de-barred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain their right to keep and bear arms is as a last resort to protect themselves against tyranny in government." – Thomas Jefferson

"The said constitution shall never be construed to authorize congress to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms." – Samuel Adams

"The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able may have a gun." – Patrick Henry

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation." – James Madison

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! - I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" – Patrick Henry

"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." – Richard Henry Lee ~ Founding Father

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." – John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 ~ Address to the military

"Delay is preferable to error." – Thomas Jefferson

"Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one." – Thomas Paine ~ Common Sense; 1776

"Character is much easier kept than recovered." – Thomas Paine ~ The American Crisis, no. 13; 1783

"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants." – William Penn

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend on God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die." – George Washington; 1776

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated." – Thomas Paine; 1776

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom... go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels nor arms. May your chains set lightly upon you and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." – Samuel Adams; 1776

"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and Constitution of his country." – Daniel Webster

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." – Benjamin Franklin

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." – Gen. Douglas MacArthur

"Good government generally begins in the family, and if the moral character of a people once degenerate, their political character must soon follow." – Elias Boudinot ~ president of the Continental Congress, later a congressman from NJ, and president of the American Bible Society.

"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security." – Samuel Adams

"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever." – Thomas Jefferson

"He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who set himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country." – John Witherspoon ~ the only clergyman in the Continental Congress

"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have...a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers." – John Adams

"Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers." – John Jay ~ first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, one of three men most responsible for our Constitution.

"Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." – William Penn; Thomas Jefferson's personal seal.

"A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district - all studied and appreciated as they merit - are the principle support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty." – Benjamin Franklin; March 1778

"Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." – Daniel Webster, 1851

"Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint." – Daniel Webster; 1847

"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free constitution is pure virtue." – John Adams ~ 2nd President of the United States

"Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure (and) which insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments." – Charles Carroll ~ signer of the Declaration of Independence.

"The rights essential to happiness.... We claim them from a higher source - from the King of kings and Lord of all the earth." – John Dickinson ~ signed the Constitution and a member of the Continental Congress

"The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: 'that God governs in the affairs of men.' And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?" – Benjamin Franklin

"The only foundation for... a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments." – Benjamin Rush ~ signed the Declaration of Independence

"A patriot without religion, in my estimation, is as great a paradox as an honest man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men? Can he be a patriot who, by an openly vicious conduct, is undermining the very bonds of Society? ...The Scriptures tell us righteousness exalteth a Nation." – Abigail Adams ~ wife of John Adams

"Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty." – John Adams ~ advice to his wife, in concern for his sons.

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it." ~ Thomas Paine

"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty... never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense." ~ Winston Churchill

"...we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds... we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...." ~ Winston Churchill

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes." Cesare Beccaria ~ 18th Century Italian Criminologist

"America is a country which produces citizens who will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won't cross the street to vote." ~ Unknown