Good government

Mr. President-elect, whomever you may be, accept the advice of the long dead, but forever wise.

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.”

“If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”

“In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.”

“How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.”

“A wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned – this is the sum of good government.”

-Thomas Jefferson

“The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
The sharper men’s weapons,
The more trouble in the land.
The more ingenious and clever men are,
The more strange things happen.
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers.”
“A truly good man is not aware of his goodness,
And is therefore good.
A foolish man tries to be good,
And is therefore not good.
A truly good man does nothing,
Yet leaves nothing undone.
A foolish man is always doing,
Yet much remains to be done.”
-Lao Tsu

“Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.”
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
-Voltaire

“Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”
“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”
-James Madison

“Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”
“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”
“Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.”
“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.”
“I walk slowly, but I never walk backward.”
-Abraham Lincoln