In history classes across America the founders are discussed, but many times on a shallow and even trivial basis. The introduction to American History in grade schools often includes events that never occurred, like  George Washington chopping down a cherry tree. In high school levels, students may memorize pivotal dates, but rarely scratch the surface on the philosophy and ideas which inspired such events. It was not until years after graduating from college that I realized I had missed out on a true education in this regard. So I began to read American history for myself, focusing a lot on original works and words from the colonists.

Throughout years of reading a more comprehensive collection from the period (although likely not even scratching the surface), including speeches, letters and other writings from George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Patrick Henry and others, I am constantly amazed how radial their words truly are. They were radicals not just in their day, but also in ours. Many of their sentiments and words are far removed from what is deemed to be acceptable political opinion today. When their ideas are repeated by contemporaries, these individuals are often dismissed as crazy, extreme and fringe. This leaves me to wonder, would America elect the founders again if they were alive today?

The following are some of the more radical quotes from the founders when compared to conventional wisdom:

Patrick Henry

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
– Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.”
– Patrick Henry, Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1788

Thomas Paine

“[A] bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.”
–Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791

“Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776)

Samuel Adams

“If you love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
– Samuel Adams, Speech, State House of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (1 August 1776)

“A standing Army, however necessary it may be at some times, is always dangerous to the Liberties of the People. Soldiers are apt to consider themselves as a Body distinct from the rest of the Citizens. They have their Arms always in their hands. Their Rules and their Discipline is severe. They soon become attached to their officers and disposed to yield implicit Obedience to their Commands. Such a Power should be watched with a jealous Eye.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (1776)

“All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; secondly, to liberty; thirdly to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.”
– Samuel Adams, The Rights of the Colonists (1772)

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”
– Samuel Adams, Letter to James Warren (24 October 1780)

John Adams

“Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion for the defence of the country, the over-throw of tyranny, or in private self-defense.”
– John Adams. A DEFENSE OF THE CONSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, at 475, (Philadelphia 1788)

“Be not intimidated…nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.”
– John Adams, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
– John Adams, Letter to John Taylor (1814)

John Q. Adams

“Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she [America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
– John Q Adams, as Secretary of State to the U.S. House of Representatives. (4 July 1821)

“But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.”
– John Q Adams, John Q. Adams, THE JUBILEE OF THE CONSTITUTION: A DISCOURSE, April 30, 1789

James Madison

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended from abroad.”
– James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1798

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”
– James Madison, Speech, House of Representatives, during the debate “On the Memorial of the Relief Committee of Baltimore, for the Relief of St. Domingo Refugees” (January 10, 1794)

”Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”
– James Madison, “Political Observations” 1795

“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.”
– James Madison, Federalist Papers, #10

“The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”
– James Madison, Speech before the Virginia State Constitutional Convention, December 1 1829

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce.”
– James Madison, Federalist Papers #45

George Washington

“The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests.
– George Washington, The Farewell Address (17 September 1796)

“We are either a United people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all maters of general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it.”
–George Washington, letter to James Madison, 1785

“‘Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.”
– George Washington, The Farewell Address (17 September 1796)

“Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.”
– George Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

Thomas Jefferson

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”
–Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

“When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.”
–Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821

“Our attachment to no nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms, 1775

“It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; … In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
– Thomas Jefferson, From the Kentucky Resolution of 1798

“If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
–Thomas Jefferson to William Short, 1791

“Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure.”
– Letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823

“The true barriers of our liberty are our State governments; and the wisest conservative power ever contrived by man, is that of which our Revolution and present government found us possessed.”
–Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1811

“Whenever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.”
–Thomas Jefferson: Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

“On every question of construction carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Johnson, 1823

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, Philadelphia, December 23, 1791

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
– Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787

“The error seems not sufficiently eradicated that the operations of the mind as well as the acts of the body are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit.”
– Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVII, 1782

“The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that… it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Cartwright, 1824

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”
–Thomas Jefferson to A. L. C. Destutt de Tracy, 1820

“An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens… Power is not alluring to pure minds and is not with them the primary principle of contest.”
– Thomas Jefferson to John Melish, 1813

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776

“All experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
– Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of Independence, 1776