Awesome Patriotic Quotes and Sayings
Quotations & Citations:
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 or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
~ Samuel Adams
There! His Majesty can now read my name without glasses. And he can double the reward on my head!
~ John Hancock
Let us tenderly and kindly cherish therefore, the means of knowledge. Let us dare to read, think, speak, and write .
~ John Adams
It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
~ Samuel Adams
If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.
~ George Washington
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of. Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends, determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution. On you depend the fortunes of America. You are to decide the important question, on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn. Act worthy of yourselves.
~ Joseph Warren
If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.
~ Samuel Adams
Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.
~ Benjamin Franklin
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?
~ George Washington
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
~ John Adams
I congratulate you and my country on the singular favor of heaven in the peaceable and auspicious settlement of our government upon a Constitution formed by wisdom, and sanctified by the solemn choice of the people who are to live under it. May the Supreme ruler of the world be pleased to establish and perpetuate these new foundations of liberty and glory….Thank God, my country is saved and by the smile of Heaven I am a free and independent man.
~ John Hancock
May our land be a land of liberty, the seat of virtue, the asylum of the oppressed, a name and a praise in the whole Earth, until the last shock of time shall bury the empires of the whole world in one common undistinguished ruin!
~ Joseph Warren
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.
~ George Washington
A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
― John Adams
No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
~ Samuel Adams
The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit — appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free.
~ Joseph Warren
Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.
~ John Adams
The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.
~ Samuel Adams
Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.
~ George Washington
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Stain not the glory of your worthy ancestors, but like them resolve never to part with your birthright; be wise in your deliberations, and determined in your exertions for the preservation of your liberties. Fllow not the dictates of passion, but enlist yourselves under the sacred banner of reason; use every method in your power to secure your rights.
~ Joseph Warren
It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.
~ John Adams
There was never a bad peace or a good war.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Though we are politically enemies, yet with regard to Science it is presumable we shall not dissent from the practice of civilized people in promoting it
~ John Hancock
The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know…Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough.
~ John Adams
That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hat its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration
~ Joseph Warren
A general dissolution of 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 when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
~ Samuel Adams
Where are our Men of abilities? Why do they not come forth to save their Country?
~ George Washington
We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.
~ Benjamin Franklin
There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.
~ John Adams
The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; 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. It will bring a mark of everlasting 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 designing men.
~ Samuel Adams
Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.
~ George Washington
And it is undeniably true that the greatest and most important right of a British subject is that he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he, either in person or by his representatives, hath given his consent; and this, I will venture to assert, is the great basis of British freedom; it is interwoven with the Constitution, and whenever this is lost, the Constitution must be destroyed.
~ Joseph Warren
The way to secure liberty is to place it in the people’s hands, that is, to give them the power at all times to defend it in the legislature and in the courts of justice.
~ John Adams
All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.
~ Samuel Adams
Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
~ Benjamin Franklin
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.
~ John Adams
It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.
~ George Washington
If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.
~ Samuel Adams
When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.
~ Benjamin Franklin
The happiness of society is the end of government.
~ John Adams
Nil desperandum, — Never Despair. That is a motto for you and me. All are not dead; and where there is a spark of patriotic fire, we will rekindle it.
~ Samuel Adams
Real men despise battle, but will never run from it.
~ George Washington
Security without liberty is called prison.
~ Benjamin Franklin
The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty….The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promuligated in the New Testament.
~ Samuel Adams
And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge…
~ John Adams
Without Freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom;and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech.
~ Benjamin Franklin
Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
~ Samuel Adams
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction – to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.
~ George Washington
[I]t is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or of any number of men, at the entering into society to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights, when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights; the principal of which, as is before observed, are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up an essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right of freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave.
~ Samuel Adams