Favorite quote from the Founding Fathers!

[hard@work]

With all this talk about our political heritage, I thought I would ask who your favorite founding father and / or what your favorite quote from them was (and why)?

:)

"Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." - Ben Franklin

(Jefferson is my fav, but I couldn't help it with that gem ... )

[Wendi]

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~ Thomas Jefferson

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

[Capitalism]

Not exactly the founders, but I've always been a fan of "Congress shall make no law..."

[Dary]

My favorite quote by a founding father was actually not a quote at all but it was supposedly written in one of Thomas Jefferson’s famous (lost) letters. This one not written to Adams but to Franklin, it went something like this...

Yo Ben, bring over the beer and I’ll twist up some chronic.

[glts]

George Washington is one of my top favorites. Thomas Jefferson said of him, "He was, indeed, in every sense of the words, a wise, a good and a great man ... On the whole, his character was, in its mass, perfect ... it may truly be said, that never did nature and fortune combine more perfectly to make a man great...."

My favorite quote by Washington, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master."

I also love Samuel Adams quotes.

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."
- Samuel Adams

[Kregener]

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” ~ Patrick Henry, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.” ~ Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual." — Thomas Jefferson

"War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."— Thomas Paine, PROSPECTS ON THE RUBICON, 1787.

"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth...for my part; I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it." ~ Patrick Henry

[LibertyBelle]

"There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!"

John Hancock, upon signing the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776