Category Archives: Quotations Freedom

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human …

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. John Adams
1798, American diplomat and 2nd President of the United States from 1797-1801 (1735-1826)

With respect to the two words general welfare, I have always regarded …

With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the ‘Articles of Confederation,’ and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted. James Madison
in a letter to James Robertson(1751-1836)

Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the …

Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the Vice President came wandering back to the press compartment of Air Force Two. Sliding in behind a table with the two reporters covering him that day, he picked slices of fruit from their plates and spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in Love Story; and Gore’s Harvard roommate Tommy Lee Jones, who played the roommate of the Gore-like character in the movieversion of Segal’s book. ‘Vice President Al Gore acknowledged Sunday a ‘miscommunication’ on his part in leading reporters to believe he and his wife were the model for the 1970s romance novel ‘Love Story.’ ‘The author, Erich Segal, told The New York Times he was ‘befuddled’ by the comments in the first place. He said he called Gore, and the vice president said it was a misunderstanding.’ Al Gore
Time, 12/15/97 and The Des Moines Register, 12/15/97