Quotes & Sayings About Founders

In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. The great, vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure, doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. — United States House Judiciary Committee Of Congress 1854

Our Founders explicitly designed our system so that all powers not delegated to the federal government (education included) fell to the states or the people; they believed that parents, not government officials, have the moral right to decide what their children are taught. — Glenn Beck

It is unlikely that it was the intention of the founders to give any public official the ability to thwart the will of the people. Although they may have been concerned about mob rule and wanted a judicial system that would prevent that, they also recognized that in many other countries it was assumed that the ruling class always knew better than the people, and they wanted no part of such a system. — Ben Carson

Our founders did not write that We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal. — Edward Snowden

You're talking to investors - and investors, they look at you and they realize, you know, not every business they invest in are the founders or the people running it going to have every bit of skill - and I think they looked at me and realized, OK, this is a guy who's got a lot - I'm much older than the usual run of people they fund. — David Plotz

You're saying no ninety-seven times out of a hundred, and most founders find they have to make a very conscious effort to do this. — Sam Altman

The founders also knew that every government system risks corruption, and they wanted to make sure Americans would be able to defend themselves should the nation's leaders become tyrannical. To that end, they ratified the Second Amendment, guaranteeing the right of Americans to bear arms. An armed populace is a powerful deterrent to tyrants both domestically and internationally, and we must defend this liberty as part of our common defense. — Ben Carson

For instance, even though entrepreneurs in technology often know the statistics that about 80 percent of founders are forced out of their companies by their venture capital investors, I have never heard anyone tell me that this would happen to them. In — Jeffrey Pfeffer

I'm honored to serve as mayor of my hometown where our founders started America with three simple words: 'We, the people.' And when they said 'people' they didn't mean 'corporations.' — Michael Nutter

When a new company is formed, its founders must have a startup mentality - a beginner's mind, open to everything because, well, what do they have to lose? (This is often something they later look back upon wistfully.) But when that company becomes successful, its leaders often cast off that startup mentality because, they tell themselves, they have figured out what to do. They don't want to be beginners anymore. That may be human nature, but I believe it is a part of our nature that should be resisted. By resisting the beginner's mind, you make yourself more prone to repeat yourself than to create something new. The attempt to avoid failure, in other words, makes failure more likely. — Ed Catmull

For all founders, going public is a momentous milestone that has to be experienced to be fully understood. It is the culmination of years of hard work and personal sacrifice. — Jay Samit

The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government. — Ron Paul

The founders of our nation feared paper currency because it gave government the means to steal from its citizens. — Walter E. Williams

I was one of the founders in, in that, the three of us all had the, had the founder's stock. — Arthur Rock

Thiel rejects the small-mindedness of most of the Valley's entrepreneurialism. The motto of Founders Fund is: "We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters." But — Richard Byrne Reilly

The Founders believed, and the Conservative agrees, in the dignity of the individual; that we, as human beings, have a right to live, live freely, and pursue that which motivates us not because man or some government says so, but because these are God-given natural rights. — Mark R. Levin

Far from being writers - founders of their own place, heirs of the peasants of earlier ages now working on the soil of language, diggers of wells and builders of houses - readers are travellers; they move across lands belonging to someone else, like nomads poaching their way across fields they did not write, despoiling the wealth of Egypt to enjoy it themselves. — Michel De Certeau

Founders need sizable egos to believe that what they are creating is good enough to change the world. What makes for great co-founders is having those egos focused on complementary, not competing, skills. — Jay Samit

Most of us agree that the United Nations is the vanguard of a foreign invasion and must be driven from our shores. Liberalism Progressivism all forms of left wing collectivism , are equally alien to the Founders ' America and must be extirpated, root and branch, laughter and derision being the most effective weapons. Look at the way they have reduced Hillary Clinton to an insignificant greasy spot on the pages of history, turned Albert Gore into an object of merriment, and are accomplishing the same for Barry and Micky Obama. — L. Neil Smith

As an immigrant, my wish is that we fix immigration. At Sequoia, we've backed a number of exceptional founders that were born abroad but started their careers in the Valley. They've created immense value, but more importantly, massive numbers of jobs locally, nationally and globally. — Alfred Lin

Our founders insisted that protecting the states' power to govern themselves was vital to limit the power of Washington and preserve freedom. — Mike Pence

You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. — Paul Graham

Losing focus is another way that founders get off track. — Sam Altman

the founders concluded, if God himself does not violate the religious freedom of man, then surely government shouldn't either. — David Platt

That man is formed for social life is an observation which, upon our first inquiry, presents itself immediately to our view, and our reason approves that wise and generous principle which actuated the first founders of civil government, an institution which hat its origin in the weakness of individuals, and hath for its end the strength and security of all; and so long as the means of effecting this important end are thoroughly known and religiously attended to government is one of the richest blessings to mankind, and ought to be held in the highest veneration — Joseph Warren

The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life. — Friedrich Max Muller

Our founders did not believe that our society could thrive without this kind of moral social structure. In fact, it was our second president, John Adams, who said of our thoroughly researched and developed governing document, Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — Ben Carson

We work as a team. I think having the individual being shown as a star actually creates problems internally. We encourage all our investors to work as a team for the benefit of the founders. — Douglas Leone

Our goals are the same as those of the U.N.'s founders, who sought to replace a world at war with one where the rule of law would prevail, where human rights were honored, where development would blossom, where conflict would give way to freedom from violence. — Ronald Reagan

The founders of the United Nations sought to replace a world at war with a world of civilized order. They hoped that a world of relentless conflict would give way to a new era, one where freedom from violence prevailed ... But the awful truth is that the use of violence for political gain has become more, not less, widespread in the last decade. — Ronald Reagan

I'm still one who says that we can get rid of the Internal Revenue Service if we would pass the fair tax, which is a tax on consumption rather than a tax on people's income, and move power back where the founders believed it should have been all along. — Mike Huckabee

I had gone into the hospital with the stupid notion that its primary object was the care and comfort of the sick and wounded. It was long after that I learned that a vast majority of all benevolent institutions are gotten up to gratify the aesthetic tastes of the public; exhibit the wealth and generosity of the founders, and furnish places for officers. The beneficiaries of the institutions are simply an apology for their existence, and having furnished that apology, the less said about them the better. — Jane Swisshelm

A man-made thing that produces pleasure (and criticism) by somehow taping into the order of the universe is beautiful. Making beautiful things makes our lives worthwhile. My teacher, and one of the founders of the Pratt industrial design program, Rowena Reed Kostellow, said, "Pure, unadulterated beauty should be the goal of civilization." From a pragmatic point of view, for something to be beautiful, it has to work. In order to make this idea clearer I have combined the ideas of beauty and function into one word: Beautility. — Tucker Viemeister

Second, some common interpretations of our shared past are badly in need of correction. Secular liberals who claim that the United States was built on Enlightenment foundations are just as mistaken as religious nationalists who believe that the American founders were "orthodox Christians." Revolutionary worldviews were actually a rich mixture of Jewish, Christian, liberal, and republican ideas and values. Third, — Philip S Gorski

Founders need to figure out what the message of the company is going to be. — Sam Altman

It is the privilege and duty of the present generation to pass on to its successors, unimpaired, the heritage of liberty bequeathed to it by the founders of the Republic. — George B. Cortelyou

Our nation was not founded because we all looked alike, or prayed alike, or descended from the same family tree. But our founders, in their genius, in this, the oldest constitutional democracy, put forth on this earth the idea that all are created equal; that we all have inalienable rights. — Cory Booker

Our founders made it extraordinarily difficult to amend the Constitution. — Barack Obama

For nearly five decades the World Federalists have worked to promote a strengthened UN and more effective institutions of global governance. I offer my personal endorsement. Now a great opportunity has opened for the realization of the dreams of the UN's founders. — Walter Cronkite

The prime reason the Google homepage is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. In fact, it was noted that the SUBMIT button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life. — Marissa Mayer

I wish I could convey the perfection of a seal slipping into water or a spider monkey swinging from point to point or a lion merely turning its head. But language founders in such seas. Better to picture it in your head if you want to feel it ... I spent more hours than I can count a quiet witness to the highly mannered, manifold expressions of life that grace our planet. It is something so bright, loud, weird and delicate as to stupefy the senses. — Yann Martel

There are some who invoke separation of church and state - to try to get the government out of the business of morality - but this is antithetical to what the founders wanted. The founders wanted to keep theology out of government so that government could focus on the proper business of morality. — Dinesh D'Souza

"If you are loyal you are successful," ruminated the company paper at one time. "All useful work is raised to the plane of art when love for the task-loyalty-is fused with the effort. Loyalty is the great lubricant of life. It saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do. The man who is loyal to his work is not wrung nor perplexed by doubts, he sticks to the ship, and if the ship founders he goes down like a hero with colors flying at the masthead and the band playing." — Thomas Watson

There's nothing more invigorating than being deeply involved with a small company and a young team of founders out to do something incredibly special. — Michael Moritz

The genius of the American Founders was to create an intricate system of balanced powers both within the state and between state and society - a system that has fostered unprecedented political, social, and intellectual freedom. — Nancy Pearcey

Early June, Providence, Rhode Island, the sun up for almost two hours already, lighting up the pale bay and the smokestacks of the Narragansett Electric factory, rising like the sun on the Brown University seal emblazoned on all the pennants and banners draped up over campus, a sun with a sagacious face, representing knowledge. But this sun
the one over Providence
was doing the metaphorical sun one better, because the founders of the university, in their Baptist pessimism, had chosen to depict the light of knowledge enshrouded by clouds, indicating that ignorance had not yet been dispelled from the human realm, whereas the actual sun was just now fighting its way through cloud cover, sending down splintered beams of light and giving hope to the squadrons of parents, who'd been soaked and frozen all weekend, that the unseasonable weather might not ruin the day's activities. — Jeffrey Eugenides

The wetland created by the beaver, like the thriving platform created by the Twitter founders, invites variation because it is an open platform where resources are shared as much as they are protected. — Steven Johnson

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our Democracy; Tonight is your answer. — Barack Obama

Our founders never intended us to have a professional political class. — Carly Fiorina

The media often glamorizes successful founders and makes their paths seem easier than they actually were. — Jessica Livingston

In 2007, there weren't any other accelerators, at least that I was aware of. We were almost the prototypical Y Combinator founders: We were highly technical but had never done a startup before. We also didn't know anyone in the Valley - investors, other entrepreneurs, potential hires. YC seemed like a great way to bootstrap that network. — Patrick Collison

The Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible. — Rand Paul

But whatever the academic debate on the topic, Nixon was correct that black Americans "don't want to be a colony in a nation." And yet he helped bring about that very thing. Over the half-century since he delivered those words, we have built a colony in a nation, not in the classic Marxist sense but in the deep sense we can appreciate as a former colony ourselves: A territory that isn't actually free. A place controlled from outside rather than within. A place where the mechanisms of representation don't work enough to give citizens a sense of ownership over their own government. A place where the law is a tool of control rather than a foundation for prosperity. A political regime like the one our Founders inherited and rejected. An order they spilled their blood to defeat. THIS — Chris Hayes

I believe strongly in the Constitutional principle of separating church and state. Our founders were right in fearing that religious freedom would be threatened in the long run by a departure from governmental neutrality in spiritual matters. — Sargent Shriver

Peter Thiel, one of the founders of PayPal, has launched a movement to convince people to not go to college.3 It's a waste of money. The return on investment isn't there anymore. School has gotten too expensive. . . If writing [computer] code is your deal and you're able to go to a trade school that enables you to write code, that's far better than a computer science degree from a four-year college or university that looks great on paper, but doesn't give you the skills you need when you graduate. — John Dearie

Whatever America's founders believed about Christianity - and they believed a wide range of things - they clearly rejected the idea of an established church. — Parker Palmer

For a young person cannot judge what is allegorical and what is literal; anything that he receives into his mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts. There you are right, he replied; but if any one asks where are such models to be found and of what tales are you speaking - how shall we answer him? I said to him, You and I, Adeimantus, at this moment are not poets, but founders of a State: now the founders of a State ought to know the general forms in which poets should cast their tales, and the limits which must be observed by them, but to make the tales is not their business. Very — Plato

Once public opinion is convinced that the increase in the quantity of money will continue and never come to an end, and that consequently the prices of all commodities will not cease to rise, everybody becomes eager to buy as much as possible and restrict his cash holdings to minimum size ... If the credit expansion is not stopped in time, the boom turns to crack-up boom: the flight into real values begins, and the whole monetary system founders. — Ludwig Von Mises

He'd lived for those letters, he remembered. He'd imagined meeting and marrying Miss Sarah Matthews, and bringing his bride up to meet his friend at Beaumont Hall. But the visit was not to be - Jeff died, despite Nolan's care and desperate prayers, and once he was gone, there was no real reason for Nolan to remain at Beaumont Hall. The "Spinsters' Club" had invited him and a couple other candidates to come for Founders' Day. He'd ridden southward, knowing Sarah Matthews would be as beautiful in person as she was interesting in her letters, and hoping she would not hate him because he was a Yankee. — Laurie Kingery

The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder. — Katherine Anne Porter

Our Founders warned against this. They said don't ... that your liberty is only as secure as the people are. Because once they, um, get the ability to vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government, liberty is done; freedom is over with. We were warned. We are there. — Sharron Angle

We pretty much won't fund a company now where the founders don't have vested equity because it's just that hard to do. — Sam Altman

That first company I started made a lot of money for the venture capitalists - nearly $30 million - but next to nothing for the founders. The companies I started after that varied between failures and mediocre successes. But at no point did I ever consider getting a 'real job.' That felt like a black and white world, and I wanted Technicolor. — Michael Arrington

A successful startup takes a very long time - certainly much longer than most founders think at the outset. You cannot treat it as an all-nighter. You have to eat well, sleep well, and exercise. You have to spend time with your family and friends. You also need to work in an area you're actually passionate about - nothing else will sustain you for ten years. — Sam Altman

We have allowed an unholy alliance of government - the new monarchy - and corporate influence - the new aristocracy - to take control of events in a way that would have made our Founders shudder. — Marianne Williamson

For the record, I believe elected officials should talk about faith. Our founders believed the moral principles of faith were indispensable to our nation's survival. The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times. — Gary Bauer

Growth hackers resist this temptation (or, more appropriate, this delusion). They opt, deliberately, to attract only the early adopters who make or break new tech services and seek to do it as cheaply as possible. In fact, part of the reason the scrappy start-ups, services, and apps in this book might not always be well-known or topics of daily conversation is because their founders have focused their energies on product development with an eye toward growth - they're now millions of members strong without any superfluous "buzz." They got to mass market by ignoring the urge to appeal to the mass market, at least to start with. — Ryan Holiday

The Founders' armor had resisted every attempt by others to force them open; the Senate had been designed as the "firm" body; it had become too firm - too firm to allow the reforms the Republic needed. Never had the dam been more firm than during the last decade, the decade since the conservative coalition had learned its strength. During that decade, despite the mandate of three presidential elections, it had stood across and blocked the rising demand for social justice, had stood so solidly that it seemed too strong ever to be breached. In January, 1949, when Lyndon Johnson arrived in it, it was still standing. — Robert A. Caro

In crafting the Constitution, the Founders emphasized process, not results. If we follow the Constitution, we won't have a perfect society, which is unattainable by imperfect humans. But we will provide opportunity for people to use their natural rights to pursue the acquisition of property and their personal happiness. The results may yield sharp inequalities of income, but the process will guarantee chances for almost everyone. — Burton W. Folsom Jr.

The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government. — Walter E. Williams

If the founders of a start-up are considering selling it, I'd advise them to consider the synergies. Could the buyer give you access to something you don't have now, like a certain technology? Would it make your life easier? Are you looking for a change? Things will change, so you have to be ready for that. — Garrett Camp

Should founders of our lands one day wake up for a moment from their lasting sleep to see the lands and things they founded, they shall really have so many reasons to ponder over their lasting footprints! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

They [the founders] proclaimed to all the world the revolutionary doctrine of the divine rights of the common man. That doctrine has ever since been the heart of the American faith. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Their way of Dancing, is nothing but a sort of stamping Motion, much like the treading upon Founders Bellows. — John Lawson

I believe the two biggest mistakes made by the Founders were giving Federal judges life-time appointments and permitting them to be confirmed without the agreement of two-thirds of the members of the United States Senate. — John Jay Hooker

America's founding fathers did not intend to take religion out of education. Many of the nation's greatest universities were founded by evangelists and religious leaders; but many of these have lost the founders concept and become secular institutions. Because of this attitude, secular education is stumbling and floundering. — Billy Graham

But, neither of these educational scenarios worked for us, so when we started a family, we wanted a different school for our children. And the other founders felt the same way. — Daniel Greenberg

When I was about 6, my cousin was very active in a Filipino repertory company, doing musicals and plays. Her aunt was one of the founders of the company, and she told my mom that there were these auditions for 'The King and I,' and that they needed kids. I auditioned, got in and the love affair started from there and just kept going. — Lea Salonga

Being a founder is like being a parent. You always stay involved. — Bart Decrem

From the very first inkling of a concept, founders need to gather a target group of five to ten potential users to begin the feedback loop. We all think we know how the market will react to new ideas, but actual users live with the pros and cons of the existing market conditions every day. They are the market experts. — Jay Samit

I want to express my deepest condolences at the passing of Steve Jobs, one of the founders of our industry and a true visionary. My heart goes out to his family, everyone at Apple and everyone who has been touched by his work, — Steve Ballmer

Sharona Muir has written a gripping personal memoir about her odyssey to rediscover and reclaim her father. Along the way she uncovers some hard truths about the heroic founders of Israel and the Beginnings of Israeli science. The Book of Telling keeps in all the fears and resentments and consolations and warmth of such a process-at once her own story and the tale of a nation. — Edmund White

We had so many different presidents, including Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln - there were other founders like Hamilton, Adams - who made it very clear that the courts can't make a law. The Constitution is expressly clear that that's a power reserved to Congress. — Mike Huckabee

But those start-up founders don't hide their failures; to the contrary, they flaunt them - blogging about them, gathering to talk about them at conferences like FailCon. — Jessica Bennett

One of the blessings I've had, really, for my entire career, is working with founders of companies, whether it was Bill Ziff at Ziff Davis or with Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo. — Dan Rosensweig

The real reason to abolish departments like Energy and Education is not to promote efficiency, nor even to save taxpayers' money. It is that many agencies perform functions that are not Federal responsibility. The founders delegated to the Government only strictly defined authority in Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution. Search the entire Constitution, and you will find no authorization for Congress to subsidize the arts, finance and regulate education or invest tax revenues in energy research. — David Boaz

I think Google's founders are both a couple of guys with some high ideals which have been to some degree reflected in the way the company has been run in terms of its having a very good workplace and good employee programs, and now that they're going public they want in some ways to be able to ensure that that kind of approach continues. So they've effectively put in place this notion of "Don't Be Evil". — Joel Bakan

Taking the state wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators, and beneficiaries from those of a professional criminal class. — Albert J. Nock

I see many founders waste too much time trying to work their networks and/or ultimately settle for mediocre but available candidates. You will definitely have to interview hard for cultural fit, but the best talent isn't cheap. — Scott Weiss

Our founders did not oust George III in order for us to crown Richard I. — Ralph Nader

Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies. — Clayton Christensen

Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There's a lot they didn't know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they'd draft today. Just keeping it frozen in time won't hack it. — Ross Perot

The Trojan Horse Sterling had referred to reflected his belief that the truth about Jonestown had never been revealed to the American people. A belief shared by his fellow co-founders. They were certain that while there were undoubtedly suicides at Jonestown, the event could more accurately be described as a mass murder that resulted from an experiment of sorts carried out by various US agencies. — James Morcan

The Founders were right all along, but the results are a lot funnier than they intended. — Molly Ivins

All fanaticism is false, because it is a contradiction of the very nature of God and of Truth. Truth cannot be shut up in a single book, Bible or Veda or Koran, or in a single religion. The Divine Being is eternal and universal and infinite and cannot be the sole property of the Mussulmans or of the Semitic religions only, - those that happened to be in a line from the Bible and to have Jewish or Arabian prophets for their founders. — Sri Aurobindo

Most people are average. Founders are not. Founders' traits seem to have an inverse normal distribution to them. — Peter Thiel

The founders understood that democracy would inevitably evolve into a system of legalized plunder unless the plundered were given numerous escape routes and constitutional protections such as the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, election of senators by state legislators, the electoral college, no income taxation, most governmental functions performed at the state and local levels, and myriad other constitutional limitations on the powers of the central government. — Thomas DiLorenzo

Music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder. — Robert Schumann

Ergo, it is not St. George who is the patron saint of England, but Set of the Hyksos. In general terms whenever the code term "red" is used in the Old Testament, it denotes the Hyksos dynasty. Connected to the Order of the Garter, is the Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, formed in 1818. Aditionally, legend has it that the senior members of the Merovingian dynasty of France (founders of the Knights Templar) had birthmarks in the shape of a red cross. — Michael Tsarion

Although the disappearance of the true wildwood [in the British Isles] occurred in the Neolithic period, before humanity began to record its own history, creation myths in almost all cultures look fabulously back to a forested earth. In the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the quest-story which begins world literature, Gilgamesh sets out on his journey from Uruk to the Cedar Mountains, where he has been charged to slay the Huwawa, the guardian of the forest. The Roman empire also defined itself against the forests in which its capital city was first established, and out of which its founders, the wolf-suckled twins, emerged. It was the Roman Empire which would proceed to destroy the dense forests of the ancient world. — Robert Macfarlane