When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Tag: Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), U.S. Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd U.S. President.
Fiscal prudence
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.
Surrendering our freedoms
Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them.
Deficit spending
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.
Dependence
Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.
More dangerous than standing armies
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
The sin of subsidies
To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
The tree of liberty
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
Arms are a protection against government tyranny
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.
Arms for free men
No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.