Us Forefathers Quotes & Sayings

In a world where so much seems to be hidden by the smoke of falsity and moral degeneration, we Americans must grasp firmly the ideals which have made this country great. We must reaffirm the basic human values that have guided our forefathers. A revival of old-fashioned patriotism and a grateful acknowledgment of what our country has done for us would be good for all our souls. — Manton S. Eddy

If we are to preserve the integrity of golf as left to us by our forefathers, it is up to all of us to carry on the true spirit of the game. — Ben Crenshaw

Let Us Be Grateful
Today we give our thanks most of all, for the ideals of honor and faith we inherit from our forefathers - for the decency of purpose, steadfastness of resolve and strength of will, for the courage and the humility, which they possessed and which we must seek every day to emulate. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words but to live by them. — John F. Kennedy

Our forefathers paved the way for us. Let's take their values, and their strengths, and rededicate ourselves to doing whatever it takes to keep America the greatest country in the history of man. And woman. — Nikki Haley

Let me first tell you one thing: It doesn't matter what the world says about Israel; it doesn't matter what they say about us anywhere else. The only thing that matters is that we can exist here on the land of our forefathers. And unless we show the Arabs that there is a high price to pay for murdering Jews, we won't survive. — David Ben-Gurion

But I can't help but long for a real return to the Western. Westerns are true Americana. They tell of the struggles of our ancestors who came West seeking new homes, new ways of living, freedom and the promise of a bright future. The story of the West is inspiring and terrible, idealistic and bloody, sublime and atrocious. It embodies this country's best and worst characteristics. The good parts of the story inspire us. The bad parts warn us of what we have to do to make things better. Even though many Western films have only a slight connection to the true history of the West, I believe exposure to these motion pictures can stimulate kids to learn more about what their forefathers endured to make the United States one nation, from sea to shining sea. — Clayton Moore

And then we do it all again, just as our forefathers did before us. It is a farming pattern, fundamentally unchanged from many centuries ago. It has changed in scale (as farms have amalgamated to survive, so there are fewer us of ) but not in its basic content. You could bring a Viking man to stand on our fell with me and he would understand what we were doing and the basic pattern of our farming year. The timing of each task varies depending on the different valleys and farms. Things are driven by the seasons and necessity, but not our will." (p. 32) — James Rebanks

If I am proud of anything, it is that I have been granted the privilege of living in the land which God promised our forefathers to give us, as it is written. — Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Let us lie down once more by the breathing side
Of Ocean, where our live forefathers sleep
As if the Known Sea still were a month wide
Atlantis howls but is no longer steep! — Allen Tate

Come, let us take a lesson from our forefathers, and enjoy the Christmas holyday. — Horace

Through the same plan of a conformity to nature in our artificial institutions, and by calling in the aid of her unerring and powerful instincts to fortify the fallible and feeble contrivances of our reason, we have derived several other, and those no small, benefits from considering our liberties in the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. — Edmund Burke

The preservation of parks, wilderness, and wildlife has also aided liberty by keeping alive the 19th century sense of adventure and awe with which our forefathers greeted the American West. Many laws protecting environmental quality have promoted liberty by securing property against the destructive trespass of pollution. In our own time, the nearly universal appreciation of these preserved landscapes, restored waters, and cleaner air through outdoor recreation is a modern expression of our freedom and leisure to enjoy the wonderful life that generations past have built for us. — Ronald Reagan

The vows we take in the holy place bind us till we are purged of them at Inanda's Kraal. Till then no blood must be shed and no flesh eaten. It was the fashion of our forefathers. — John Buchan

Let us make future generations remember us as proud ancestors just as, today, we remember our forefathers. — Roh Moo-hyun

A splendid storehouse of integrity and freedom has been bequeathed to us by our forefathers. In this day of confusion, of peril to liberty, our high duty is to see that this storehouse is not robbed of its contents. — Herbert Hoover

We stand on the backs of our forefathers, and live with what they have left us. That doesn't mean we have to repeat the past but we must listen to it. — Erik Mercer

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self esteem. We have abused power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen! — Billy Graham

Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph. — Theodore Roosevelt

We are men born in a land of eternal darkness. We grope where we cannot see clearly. Why mistrust what ancient books say? Why mistrust what our souls say? Our forefathers gave us this lamp, and the flame was lit in brighter days, when men saw further. I agree the lamp-light of such far-off lore, is dim for us; but surely that proves it to be folly, not wisdom, to cast the lamp aside: for then we are blind. — John C. Wright

What passes for wine among us, is not the juice of the grape. It is an adulterous mixture, brewed up of nauseous ingredients, by dunces, who are bunglers in the art of poison-making; and yet we, and our forefathers, are and have been poisoned by this cursed drench, without taste or flavour - The only genuine and wholesome beveridge in England, is London porter, and Dorchester table-beer; but as for your ale and your gin, your cyder and your perry, and all the trashy family of made wines, I detest them as infernal compositions, contrived for the destruction of the human species. — Tobias Smollett

Afghanistan is a story of patriarchy, in a raw form. In that, it is also a story of Western history, with elements of the lives our foremothers and forefathers led. By learning about an ill-functioning system in Afghanistan, we can also begin to see how most of us - men and women, regardless of nationality and ethnicity - at times perpetuate a problematic culture of honor, where women and men are both trapped by traditional gender roles. Because we all prefer those roles - or maybe because it is how we were brought up and we know of nothing else. — Jenny Nordberg

I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid- and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come- the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us. — James Joyce

All the Jews of Polish origin were being sent back to the land of their forefathers, and so the two gentle sisters kissed us and packed and left. We sent them packages in care of the Jewish community in Warsaw, but of course the packages were returned because it was illegal to send anything to Jews. So we took the advice of a wily neighbor, wrote the address in Polish, and like magic the packages arrived. — Edith Hahn Beer

All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civilization they created, but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we dream. - T. K. Whipple, Study Out the Land — Larry McMurtry

I have come to the conclusion that none of us in our generation feels as guilty about sin as we should or as our forefathers did. — Francis Schaeffer

What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived. — Moshe Dayan

To turn our hearts to our fathers is to search out the names of our deceased ancestors and to perform the saving ordinances in the temple for them. This will forge a continuous chain between us and our forefathers eventually all the way back to Father Adam and Mother Eve. — James E. Faust

To us Americans much has been given; of us much is required. With all our faults and mistakes, it is our strength in support of the freedom our forefathers loved which has saved mankind from subjection to totalitarian power. — Norman Thomas

This is the bread of affliction which our forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Let all those who are hungry come and eat with us. Let all those who are in need come and share our meal. This year we are here. Next year may we all be in the land of Israel. — Elie Wiesel

Sure, if you saw your friend in hell, you would persuade him hard to come thence, if that would serve ; and why do you not now persuade him to prevent it? The charity of our ignorant forefathers may rise up in judgment against us, and condemn us. They would give all their estates almost, for so many masses, or pardons, to deliver the souls of their friends from a feigned purgatory, and we will not so much as importunately admonish and entreat them, to save theme from the certain flames of hell ; though this may be effectual to do them good, and the other will do none (403). Hadst thou rather he should burn for ever in hell, than thou shouldst lose his favour, or the maintenance thou hast from him? (408) — Richard Baxter

All of us from fertile egg to embryo to corpse, are exactly that: warm, wet, furry animals compelled by the sexuality of our forefathers and foremothers to be, either directly or indirectly, our own exciting and excitable, provocative and provocable selves. — Lynn Margulis

Justice O'Connor was the fifth vote to uphold the time- honored principle, which bears repeating, of separation of church and state. There was real wisdom in the decision of our forefathers in writing a Constitution that gave us an opportunity to grow as such a diverse nation, and we should never forget it. — Dick Durbin

His voice bellowed with strength and courage, "People of Israel, Yahweh has spoken to me and has told me to be strong and courageous, for we will inherit this land that Yahweh had sworn to our forefathers! But we must be careful to do according to all the law that Moses commanded us! We must not turn from it to the right or to the left, and only then will we have success wherever we go! The book of the Law shall not depart from our mouths, but we shall meditate on it day and night, for Yahweh our Elohim is with us wherever we go!" The people applauded. Caleb beamed with honor. They had been through so much. They had survived thirst and starvation in a desert land, the death of loved ones, rebellion, plagues, famines, and wars. And now, finally, finally they were about to gain their inheritance. Their eternal wandering would be over. — Brian Godawa

Let us contemplate our forefathers, and posterity, and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that "if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom," it is a very serious consideration ... that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers of the event. — Samuel Adams

Our forefathers were heroes. But why were they heroes? Because they fought for democracy. They fought for the life and liberty of the Filipino people. They fought for our independence, our freedom. They fought against tyranny, totalitarianism, and dictatorship. They fought for us and that is something we must be grateful for. — Yanan Melo

There is so much beauty in the world that I wonder how we get around to marshalling so much hatred within ourselves. I hope, one day, you will feel the same way seeing this sight of the heavens that I see, that mu forefathers and their forefathers have seen since time began, and think of me, and marvel that in this beauty time stands still for us all, making us all immortal on the lips of those we leave behind.
Just remember me kindly, my son. — Anirban Bose

We need the historian and philosopher to give us with trenchant pen, the story of our forefathers, and let our soul and body, with phosphorescent light, brighten the chasm that separates us. We should cling to them just as blood is thicker than water. — Arturo Alfonso Schomburg

The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador attain liberty, and inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States' independence, cannot die. Today, this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to rebuild Haiti. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide

It is the fear of the past; a fear not merely of the evil in the past, but of the good in the past also. The brain breaks down under the unbearable virtue of mankind. There have been so many flaming faiths that we cannot hold; so many harsh heroisms that we cannot imitate; so many great efforts of monumental building or of military glory which seems to us at once sublime and pathetic. The future is a refuge from the fierce competition of our forefathers. — G.K. Chesterton

An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life. — William Kingdon Clifford