Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness — these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”
\n<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nGeorge Washington<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nBenjamin Franklin<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Laws without morals are in vain.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nBenjamin Franklin (Motto of the University of Pennsylvania)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“. . . Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. <\/strong>These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long <\/strong>as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nPatrick Henry<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nJohn Adams<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nJohn Adams<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Statesmen, my dear Sir, 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, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nJohn Adams<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nSamuel Adams<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nSamuel Adams<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nSamuel Adams<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy…. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader…. If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nSamuel Adams<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nSamuel Johnson<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. … It is alleged by men of loose principles, or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political stations. But the scriptures teach a different doctrine. They direct that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of God, men of truth, hating covetousness. It is to the neglect of this rule that we must ascribe the multiplied frauds, breaches of trust, speculations and embezzlements of public property which astonish even ourselves; which tarnish the character of our country and which disgrace our government. When a citizen gives his vote to a man of known immorality, he abuses his civic responsibility; he not only sacrifices his own responsibility; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nNoah Webster<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“…if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nNoah Webster<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“… the manners of the people in general are of the utmost moment to the stability of any civil society. When the body of a people are altogether corrupt in their manners, the government is ripe for dissolution.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nJohn Witherspoon<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“So true is this, that civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nJohn Witherspoon<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“… but a republic once equally poised, must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty, and by some tumultuous revolution, either return to its first principles, or assume a more unhappy form.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nJohn Witherspoon<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“The only foundation for… a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nBenjamin Rush<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nDaniel Webster<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nDaniel Webster<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nHorace Greely<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nEdmund Burke<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsel of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nEdmund Burke<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[T]he very best forms of government are vain without public virtue . . . .”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nWilliam A. Cocke<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“When was public virtue to be found when private was not?”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nWilliam Cowper<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“The laws by which the Divine Ruler of the universe has decreed an indissoluble connection between public happiness and private virtue, whatever apparent exceptions may delude our short-sighted judgments, never fail to vindicate their supremacy and immutability.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nWilliam Cabell Rives<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nWilliam Penn<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“If men be good, government cannot be bad.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nWilliam Penn<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nJoseph Story<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nFrederick Douglas<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[R]eligion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nNorthwest Ordinance of 1787<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“I consider the domestic virtue of the Americans as the principle source of all their other qualities. It acts as a promoter of industry, as a stimulus to enterprise and as the most powerful restraint of public vice. . . . No government could be established on the same principle as that of the United States with a different code of morals.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nFrancis Grund<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity; but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, <\/span><\/strong>and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their <\/span><\/strong>religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter in the Constitution <\/span><\/strong>in order to vary the whole form of their government.”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nFrancis Grund<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. <\/span><\/strong>There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nDouglas MacArthur<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\nAlexis de Tocqueville<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her comodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies; and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast commerce, and it was not there. Not until I visited the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n