Founders' Daily Quote(s): 8/10-14/09

Monday, August 10, 2009.
"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them." --Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, 1753

Tue. 8/11.
"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, Query 19, 1781

Wed. 8/12.
"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis, No. 1, 1776

Thu. 8/13.
"Can you then consent to be the only sufferers by this revolution, and retiring from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity, which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can -- GO -- and carry with you the jest of tories and scorn of whigs -- the ridicule, and what is worse, the pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten!" --George Washington, letter to the Officers of the Army, 1783

Fri. 8/14.
"[W]hy give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, where we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see?" --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Michael Megear, 1823

It sure doesn't appear that anyone, leastwise General and first President of the United States, desired anything like the welfare system we have in place these days. They would probably roll over in their graves if they could see what has happened to our wonderful country.

Source: Patriot Post.