To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace.  - GW

We ought not to look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dear-bought experience.  - GW

"Government is not the solution.  Government is the problem."  - Ronald Reagan

"Though the people support the government, the government shall not support the people"
- Grover Cleveland's 1887 veto message on a bill to buy seed for drought-stricken Texas farmers

"Ask not what your country can do for you; Ask what you can do for your country."
- John F. Kennedy, Inauguration Speech, January 1961

"Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue; Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
- Barry Goldwater's nomination acceptance speech, 1964 Republican party convention

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence.  - GW

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly."  - Thomas Paine, "Common Sense" pamphlet

"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

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a Nation with its virtue?"
-  GW's Farewell Address

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.  - GW

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.  - Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Guard against the postures of pretended patriotism."  - GW

"...you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness....indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our Country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts."  - GW

"My ardent desire is, and my aim has been...to keep the United States free from political connections with every other country, to see them independent of all and under the influence of none."  - GW

"Associate yourself with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for 'tis better to be alone than in bad company."  - GW

"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be." - Proclamation of National Thanksgiving by GW

"Our reconstruction measures were radically defective because they failed to give the ex-slaves any land."  -Frederick Douglass

“The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us.  I have had but one answer from the beginning.  Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us.  Do nothing with us!  If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! . . . And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also.  All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs!” - from a speech that former slave Frederick Douglass made to abolitionists in 1865

It is well that war is so terrible, else we should get too fond of it.  - Robert E. Lee

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.  - Thomas Jefferson

I have left orders to be awakened at any time in case of national emergency, even if I'm in a cabinet meeting.  - Ronald Reagan

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.  It is its natural manure."   - Thomas Jefferson, 1788