Education
“Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The best means of forming a manly, virtuous, and happy people will be found in the right education of youth. Without this foundation, every other means, in my opinion, must fail.” – George Washington
“I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” – Thomas Jefferson
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Now, the education of our children is of national concern, and if they are not educated properly, it is a national calamity.” – Dwight Eisenhower
Labor
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” – Abraham Lincoln
“Only a fool would try to deprive working men and working women of their right to join the union of their choice.” – Dwight Eisenhower
“I have no use for those — regardless of their political party — who hold some foolish dream of spinning the clock back to days when unorganized labor was a huddled, almost helpless mass.”- Dwight Eisenhower
“History is a great teacher. Now everyone knows that the labor movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
Voting & Elections
“Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.” ― Naomi Klein
“A man without a vote is a man without protection.” ― Lyndon B. Johnson
“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” ― Abraham Lincoln
“The vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
Peace
“I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.” – Thomas Paine
“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” – Albert Einstein
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.” – Ronald Reagan
“Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.” – Buddha
“If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner.” – Nelson Mandela
“There can be no true disarmament without peace, and there can be no real peace without very material disarmament.” – Dwight Eisenhower
Progressive Ideology
“I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.” – Thomas Jefferson
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history”. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
“We are trying to construct a more inclusive society. We are going to make a country in which no one is left out.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.” – Thomas Jefferson
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
“I believe that the United States as a government, if it is going to be true to its own founding documents, does have the job of working toward that time when there is no discrimination made on such inconsequential reason as race, color, or religion.” – Dwight Eisenhower
“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass, 19th century African-American Social Reformer
Separation of Church & State
“Of all the tyrannies that affect mankind, tyranny in religion is the worst.” – Thomas Paine
“If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.” – George Washington
“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.” – Thomas Jefferson
“The civil government … functions with complete success … by the total separation of the Church from the State.” – James Madison
“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty. Usurpation is then an easy attainment, and an usurper soon found. The people themselves become the willing instruments of their own debasement and ruin. Let us, then, look to the great cause, and endeavor to preserve it in full force. Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.” – James Monroe
“When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obligated to call for help of the civil power, it’s a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.” – Benjamin Franklin
“That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” – Patrick Henry
“That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forebearance, love, and charity towards each other.” – George Mason