"Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776, which I originally subscribed on the 2d day of August of the same year and of which I am now the last surviving signer."
— Charles Carroll, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; selected as delegate to The Constitutional Convention; Framer of the Bill Of Rights
Posted 2010-07-13 10:05 PM (#40857 - in reply to #9235) By: EternalVigilance
"As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight."
-- Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776
Hat tip to PatriotPost.US and their Founder's Quote Daily.
Posted 2010-07-16 6:28 AM (#40986 - in reply to #40857) By: EternalVigilance
Patrick Henry's speech made to the Virginia Constitutional Convention.
March 23, 1775 at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia
"It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it."
-- Patrick Henry
(1736-1799) US Founding Father
Source: Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775); first published in Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1817) by William Wirt http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Patrick.Henry.Quote.8261
Edited by gcsteven 2010-08-11 7:59 AM
Posted 2010-08-05 12:55 PM (#41917 - in reply to #40986) By: gcsteven
