"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate for the government of any other."
-
John Adams
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."
-
George Washington
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,
religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim
the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of
human happiness...reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national
morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
-
George Washington's farewell address, 1796
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation
be thought secure if we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the
minds of men that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be
violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that
God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever."
-
Thomas Jefferson
"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon
the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all
of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to
sustain ourselves according
to the Ten Commandments of God."
-
James Madison
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation
was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the
gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been
afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here."
-
Patrick Henry
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form
the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evil men
suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed
from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible."
-
Noah Webster
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and
vicious, they have more need of masters."
-
Benjamin Franklin
"The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: 'that God
governs in the affairs of men.' And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His
notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"
-
Benjamin Franklin
"We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build
the house, the labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that,
without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than
the builders of Babel."
-
Benjamin Franklin
"Statesmen may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality
alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only
foundation of a
free constitution is
pure virtue."
-
John Adams
"
The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of
government in the next."
-
Abraham Lincoln
"[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I
perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence,
not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious
to know what they shall do with us ... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do
nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing
with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are
worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!...And
if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a
chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! ... [Y]our interference is doing him
positive injury."
[Alas!]
-
Frederick Douglass
"If I were called upon to identify the principal trait of the
entire 20th century, I would be unable to find anything more precise
and pithy than this statement: Men have forgotten God."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public
treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising
the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses
over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These
nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual
faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty
to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from
complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
-
Alexander Tyler
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force. Like fire,
it is a dangerous servant and fearful master."
-
George Washington
"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom
of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by
violent and sudden usurpations."
-
James Madison