Benjamin Rush On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: 1806
[T]he only foundation for a useful education in 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.
Benjamin Rush letter to John Armstrong
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: March 19, 1783
Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.
David Ramsay .Speech to the Assembly at Charlestown
Categories: Equality, Religion and Morality, Virtue
Date: 1778
Our present form of government is every way preferable to the royal one we have lately renounced. It is much more favorable to purity of morals, and better calculated to promote all our important interests . . . . Royal courts are reservoirs, from whence insincerity, hypocrisy, dissimulation, pride, luxury, and extravagance deluge and overwhelm the body of the people. On the other hand, republics are favorable to truth, sincerity, frugality, industry, and simplicity of manners. Equality, the life and soul of commonwealths, cuts off all pretensions to preferment, but those which arise from extraordinary merit.
John Witherspoon A Sermon Delivered at Public Thanksgiving after Peace
Categories: Character, Political Leaders, Religion and Morality, Virtue
Date: Unknown
Is it reasonable to expect wisdom from the ignorant? Fidelity from the profligate? Assiduity and application to public business from men of a dissipated life? Is it reasonable to commit the management of public revenue to one who has wasted his own patrimony? Those, therefore, who pay no regard to religion and sobriety in the persons whom they send to the legislature of any State are guilty of the greatest absurdity and will soon pay dear for their folly.
Noah Webster History of the United States
Categories: Americans / American Character, Character, Political Leaders, Religion and Morality, Republican Government
Date: Unknown
f the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . . If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.
George Washington First Inaugural Address
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: April 30, 1789
The foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality, and the preeminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world.
Samuel Adams letter to John Trumbull
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: October 16, 1778
Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.
Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Paine
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: Unknown
If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?
John Jay letter to Peter Augustus Jay
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: April 9, 1784
The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.
George Washington Farewell Address
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: September 19, 1796
[W]here is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths . . . ?
John Adams Address to First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts
Categories: Religion and Morality
Date: October 11, 1798
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.