Quotes about Founders

Here's a nation, one of the founding pillars was freedom of speech and freedom of expression. And yet, we have imposed upon people restrictions on what they can say, on what they can think. And the media is the largest proponent of this, crucifying people who say things really quite innocently.

The present Constitution, with a few alterations of a trifling nature, is just as good as we want; and if it is sustained on this land of Joseph, it will be done by us and our posterity.

Religious liberty is misunderstood. It simply means that the Founders said that everyone in America should have the freedom to practice and exercise their religion. Not to believe it but to exercise our beliefs - to act on our beliefs. It's not about believing privately in your head, privately in that building, or simply about freedom of worship.

Our founders were committed to a belief in the importance of life and liberty, and we must fight to see those rights extended to our children still in the womb.

The founders wanted generally accepted religious values to be taught in our schools without favoring any particular denomination, but they never intended to exclude God from the classroom, because they knew that you had to have something upon which to base your system of values. If we only believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, whose values do we use to govern society?

It is unlikely that it was the intention of the founders to give any public official the ability to thwart the will of the people. Although they may have been concerned about mob rule and wanted a judicial system that would prevent that, they also recognized that in many other countries it was assumed that the ruling class always knew better than the people, and they wanted no part of such a system.

We should understand the Constitution as the founders meant that it should be understood. We can do this by reading their words about it, such as those contained in the Federalist Papers. Such understanding is essential if we are to preserve what God has given us.

America's founding fathers did not intend to take religion out of education. Many of the nation's greatest universities were founded by evangelists and religious leaders; but many of these have lost the founders concept and become secular institutions. Because of this attitude, secular education is stumbling and floundering.

The Founders didn't mention political parties when they wrote the Constitution, and George Washington in essence warned us against them in his Farewell Address.

Jeremy Stoppelman started Yelp. Max Levchin started Slide. I started LinkedIn. It was a mininova explosion of folks jumping out to doing other entrepreneurial activities.

There are some who invoke separation of church and state - to try to get the government out of the business of morality - but this is antithetical to what the founders wanted. The founders wanted to keep theology out of government so that government could focus on the proper business of morality.

Beyond any question, the way the American founders consistently linked faith and freedom, republicanism and religion, was not only deliberate and thoughtful, it was also surprising and anything but routine.