Fisher Ames Quotes
April 19, 1758 – July 4, 1808
More Fisher Ames Quotes
The House is composed of very good men, not shining, but honest and reasonably well-informed, and in time they will be found to improve, and not to be much inferior in eloquence, science, and dignity, to the British Commons. They are patriotic enough, and I believe there are more stupid (as well as more shining) people in the latter, in proportion.
Fisher Ames— Letter to George Richard Minot (May 27, 1789); reported in Works of Fisher Ames (1854), ed. Seth Ames, vol. 1, p. 45.
I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.
Fisher Ames— Speech on Biennial Elections before the Convention of Massachusetts (January 1788), reported in Seth Ames, John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames with a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence (1854) p. 7.
The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away.
Fisher Ames— Reported in Memoirs of Theophilus Parsons (1859). Ames is reported to have said this while opposing Parsons as counsel in a legal case.
The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.
Fisher Ames— The Dangers of American Liberty (1805), in Ames, Fisher, and Seth Ames (1854). Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence. Boston: Little, Brown. pp. 349.
The rights of conscience, of bearing arms, of changing the government, are declared to be inherent in the people. Freedom of the press, too.
Fisher Ames— Letter to George Richards Minot (June 12, 1789), reported in Fisher Ames, Seth Ames, John Thornton Kirkland, Works of Fisher Ames: With a Selection from His Speeches and Correspondence (1854), p. 54.
It was said by Fisher Ames that “falsehood proceeds from Maine to Georgia, while truth is pulling on his boots”.
Fisher Ames— Niles' Weekly Register (7 May 1831) 40:163
Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water."
Fisher Ames— Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1844): Politics
