Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness.

George Washington: First Annual Message, January 8, 1790

• Adams, John
• Adams, Samuel
• Bartlett, Josiah
• Braxton, Carter
• Carroll, Charles
• Chase, Samuel
• Clark, Abraham
• Clymer, George
• Ellery, William
• Floyd, William
• Franklin, Benjamin
• Gerry, Elbridge
• Gwinnett, Button
• Hall, Lyman
• Hamilton, Alexander
• Hancock, John
• Harrison V, Benjamin
• Hart, John
• Henry, Patrick
• Hewes, Joseph
• Heyward, Thomas
• Hooper, William
• Hopkins, Stephen
• Hopkinson, Francis
• Huntington, Samuel
• Jay, John
• Jefferson, Thomas
• Lee, Francis Lightfoot
• Lee, Richard Henry
• Lewis, Francis
• Livingston, Philip
• Lynch, Thomas
• Madison, James

• McKean, Thomas
• Middleton, Arthur
• Morris, Lewis
• Morris, Robert
• Morton, John
• Nelson, Thomas
• Otis, James
• Paca, William
• Paine, Thomas
• Paine, Robert Treat
• Penn, John
• Read, George
• Rodney, Caesar
• Ross, George
• Rush, Benjamin
• Rutledge, Edward
• Sherman, Roger
• Smith, James
• Stockton, Richard
• Stone, Thomas
• Taylor, George
• Thomson, Charles
• Thornton, Matthew
• Walton, George
• Washington, George
• Whipple, William
• Williams, William
• Wilson, James
• Witherspoon, John
• Wolcott, Oliver
• Wythe, George

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.

Benjamin Franklin: Unknown

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin: 1775

Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery

Thomas Jefferson: Unknown

Every State has a natural right in cases not within the compact (casus non faederis) to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits. Without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them.

Thomas Jefferson: Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

James Madison: 4 Annals of Congress 179 (1794)

I ask, sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them.

Samuel Adams: Unknown

The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.

Richard Henry Lee: Unknown

A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves. They include all men capable of bearing arms. To preserve liberty is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms and be taught alike how to use them.

Thomas Jefferson: Unknown

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms disarm only those who are neither inclined, nor determined to commit crimes. Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants. They serve rather to encourage than prevent homicides from an unarmed man, may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.

Thomas Paine: Unknown

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, where the Government are afraid to trust their people with arms.

John Adams: Unknown