"If ever...

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

...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

[Oeditpus Rex]

1. Yeah, we need them all right

But where the hell are they? Who the hell are they?

[ReRe]

4. You are right!

My top three favorite forefathers were #1 Thomas Jefferson #2 James Madison & #3 Samuel Adams (NOT John).

And sorry to say, they are probably all rolling in their graves at this time.

I do hope OUR TRUE PATRIOTS will rise and lead us out of this mire.

[MadameButterfly]

5. great men but also slave owners

but John Adams was not (maybe Samuel wasn't either)

[ReRe]

7. Yeah

and we stole the land out from under the Indians after landing here. Great men did allot of bad things. But here we are smack dab in the first quarter of the 21st century. Democracy is a verb, and it's been busy for 249 yrs or so. We've outlawed slavery and honor the sovereignty of other countries (until djt, anyways.)
We did pretty good for 240 yrs, so I'm definitely not ready to give up the ship yet.

[MadameButterfly]

8. Yes. We have to judge people in the context of their times

and what these men did was a big leap in the right direction, making so much possible.
It took a war to outlaw slavery, though it would have been ended another way eventually.

I'm not ready to give up either. I can't imagine everyone hunkering down and taking it as the world falls down around us. I just can't quite figure out how we turn it around either.

I truly thought totalitarianism would be as obviously abhorrent to the world as slavery by now. They aren't bringing slavery back, right?

[Joinfortmill]

2. And they are us.

[MadameButterfly]

6. These are the times that try men's souls

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value...

Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can be brave....

We fight not to enslave, but to set a country free, and to make room upon the earth for honest men to live in.”

Thomas Paine

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. From the same guy:

"A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody."
"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes."

[MadameButterfly]

10. Those are good ones that I didn't know

Are they also from Common Sense?

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

11. I'm not sure.

I often read quotes from the famous, the infamous and the Founders.

Also from TP...truer words:
"Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions."