Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower
Competitive American Founding Fathers quotations
The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.
Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.
My heart trembles when I reflect that God is just
I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
The Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.
I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president - not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty.
He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.
Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected;
they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.
One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo-Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped.
I looked around for God's judgments, but saw no signs of them.
I have sworn upon the altar of god.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.
Question with boldness even the existence of a god.
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
I think it's time we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers... Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them for ourselves.
I believe the American people are more concerned with a man's views and abilities than with the church to which he belongs. I believe the founding fathers meant it when they provided in Article VI of the Constitution that there should be no religious test for public office. And I believe that the American people mean to adhere to those principles today.
The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.
For my part, I sincerely esteem the Constitution, a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.
The study of theology, as it stands in the Christian churches, is the study of nothing.
Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption
Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise.... During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in laity; in both, superstition, bigotry, and persecution.
Have you considered that system of holy lies and pious frauds that has raged and triumphed for 1,500 years?
This would be the best of all possible worlds, if there were no religion in it.
The Founding Fathers were more deists.
If you had to categorize them as anything. There was some sort of moving prime force. But it's an impersonal force. Some people call it Nature. Certainly not this personal god who you have a personal relationship with, who listens to your prayers and answers them, or doesn't. You know, not the silly stuff that most Americans believe because we're such a dumb nation.
We can't rely - or no country can rely on just a single personality to carry it forward. And so what the American founding fathers understood was that institutions were built for human imperfection not human perfection.
The seal and the constitution, reflects the thinking of the founding fathers that this was to be a nation by white people, and for white people. Native Americans, Blacks, and all other non-white people, were to be the burden bearers for the real citizens of this nation.
The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.
Have you seen the Olympic uniforms? It's for the American Olympic team and it's berets. To me, nothing says America like a guy in a beret. Look at our founding fathers, they all wore berets.
All Americans mourn the passing of the author of the Declaration of Independence, George Jefferson.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The Founding Fathers believed that our Creator gave us certain inalienable rights. The Pledge of Allegiance simply reinforces the beliefs that led to the birth of our great nation. It is an oath of our fidelity to our country, and I am disappointed that the [9th Circuit] Court chose to rule against this American treasure.
Our country was founded on a distrust of government.
Our founding fathers gave power to the people to keep an eye on government. So when politicians say, 'Trust me,' they're actually being very un-American.
In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution.
If we are negative by nature, we Americans are more human than most.
The Founding Fathers loved going negative. Heck, the Declaration of Independence is one long negative ad.
Yet when the blood of the sons of immigrants and the grandsons of slaves fell on foreign fields, it was American blood. In it you could not read the ethnic particulars of the soldier who died next to you. He was an American. And when I think of how we learned this lesson, I wonder how we could have unlearned it.
Franklin may . . . be considered one of the founding fathers of American democracy, since no democratic government can last long without conciliation and compromise.
This [anti-terrorism bill] is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech and the Fourth Amendment protection of private property... Some of these provisions place more power in the hands of law enforcement than our Founding Fathers could have dreamt and severely compromises the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. This bill, while crafted with good intentions, is rife with constitutional infringements I could not support.
The yearning for the common good comes from the refusal to accept that perhaps Americans have very little in common apart from the elements of a sometimes successful civil religion based around a sentimental, indeed sometimes teary-eyed, attachment to the constitution and a belief in the quasi-divine wisdom of the founding fathers.
Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot? Why, because being a God-fearing, self-reliant, freedom-loving American is a choice. Or we could be one of those government-dependent, Constitution-fearing socialists. That's the question, actually, the Founding Fathers asked. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot?