Fisher Ames Quotes

America is rising with a giant's strength. Its bones are yet but cartilages.

The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away.

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

That can never be reasoned down which was not reasoned up.

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

No one ever became, or can become truly eloquent without being a reader of the Bible, and an admirer of the purity and sublimity of its language.

All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.

The happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend on piety, religion, and morality.

Liberty is not to be enjoyed, indeed it cannot exist, without the habits of just subordination; it consists, not so much in removing all restraint from the orderly, as in imposing it on the violent.

The House is composed of very good men, not shining, but honest and reasonably well-informed, and in time will be found to improve, and not much inferior in eloquence, science, and dignity, to the British Commons. They are patriotic enough, and I believe there are more stupid (as well as more shining) people in the latter, in proportion.

[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention ... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often ... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.

[the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

I am commonly opposed to those who modestly assume the rank of champions of liberty, and make a very patriotic noise about the people. It is the stale artifice which has duped the world a thousand times, and yet, though detected, it is still successful. I love liberty as well as anybody. I am proud of it, as the true title of our people to distinction above others; but ... I would guard it by making the laws strong enough to protect it.

We are not to consider ourselves, while here, as at church or school, to listen to the harangues of speculative piety; we are here to talk of the political interests committed to our charge.

Should not the Bible regain the place it once held as a schoolbook? Its morals are pure, its examples are captivating and noble ... In no Book is there so good English, so pure and so elegant, and by teaching all the same they will speak alike, and the Bible will justly remain the standard of language as well as of faith.

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

No man can be a sound lawyer in this land who is not well read in the ethics of Moses and the virtues of Jesus.

A large portion of our citizens, who will not believe, even on the evidence of facts, that any public evils exist, or are impending. They deride the apprehensions of those who foresee, that licentiousness will prove, as it ever has proved, fatal to liberty.