Nearly Every Founding Fathers' Quote Shared By A Likely Future Congressman Is Fake

A future "constitutional conservative" member of Congress.

This is Jody Hice, a pastor and talk radio host, who recently secured a win in a Republican primary to replace Rep. Paul Broun. Hice is almost guaranteed to be the next congressman from Georgia’s 10th District.

"I have one plan: the Constitution. If we were following this document we wouldn’t have the problems that we’re facing today," Hice has said.

Hice also loves to naturally share Founding Fathers quotes. Unfortunately, many of them are fake.

Take this quote that Hice attributes to Jefferson:

Here's another example of misquoting Jefferson:

"Most Bad Government has grown out of Too Much Government." ~ Thomas Jefferson

But he doesn't just misquote Thomas Jefferson; he also misquotes Patrick Henry:

Thomas S. Kidd, an associate professor at Baylor and author of Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, debunked this quote in a blog post on the Huffington Post

Another widely cited "Henry" quotation is: "The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests." This is a more complex misquotation, because it sounds like something Henry might have said -- maybe during the 1790s, after he opposed the Constitution's adoption, when he was hoping to restrict the new government's powers? The problem is that this quotation seems to have been entirely fabricated, and quite recently at that. The earliest reference I have found to this quotation is in two books published in 2003. But why create a bogus quotation when Henry actually said similar things about the need to restrain government? In any case, this is also frequently cited on social media sites and in political books. On Facebook the quotation has its own "common interest" page.

Then there's this quote from Franklin:

And this Franklin quote is dubious as well:

Here's another quote from Washington. Yes, it is also fake.

This Jefferson quote, is also very fake indeed.

This quote attributed to John Quincy Adams seems to only appear in management books.

This is where I stopped looking, but you get the idea.

Skip to footer