Selected Quotes
"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
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence -- it is force. Like fire,
it is a dangerous servant and fearful master."
- George Washington
Thanksgiving Proclamation, 1789
Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to
obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits and humbly to implore His protection and favor;
and Whereas both Houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to
recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be
observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially
by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their
safety and happiness:"
- George Washington

"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one
another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of
industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it
has earned. This is the sum of good government."
- Thomas Jefferson's first inaugural address
"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
"Of all systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my
observation, none appear to be so pure as that of Jesus."
- Thomas Jefferson, To William Canby, 1813
"I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by Himself, to be the most
pure, benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man..."
- President Thomas Jefferson
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too
many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
- Thomas Jefferson Letter to William Ludlow, 1824
"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare,
but only those specifically enumerated."
- Thomas Jefferson

"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
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government
are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous
and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war,
peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States
will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the
lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement
and prosperity of the State."
- James Madison
"With respect to the words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them
as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal
and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character
which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators."
- James Madison
"Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and
religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be entrusted
on any other foundation than religious principle, not any government secure which
is not supported by moral habits... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes
them good citizens."
- Daniel Webster
"Why is it that, next to the birth day of the Saviour of the World,
your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day [July 4th]?
... Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the
nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day of the Saviour? That it
forms a leading event in the progress of the gospel dispensation? Is it not
that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on
the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon earth? That it laid the
corner stone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity. . ?"
- John Quincy Adams
"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
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."
- William Penn

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and
vicious, they have more need of masters."
- Benjamin Franklin
"A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district -
all studied and appreciated as they merit - are the principle support of virtue,
morality, and civil liberty."
- 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

"Providence has given our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty,
as well as privilege and interest, of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians
for their rulers."
- John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court
"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
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly
inadequate for the government of any other."
- John Adams
"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good
from the Savior (Jesus) of the world is communicated to us through this book."
- Abraham Lincoln
"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of
government in the next."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God,
can not long retain it."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience.
Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the
senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God,
democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under
God, then we will be a nation gone under.
If I could just make a personal statement of my own -- in these 3 1/2 years I have
understood and known better than ever before the words of Lincoln, when he said that
he would be the greatest fool on this footstool called Earth if he ever thought that
for one moment he could perform the duties of that office without help from One who is
stronger than all."
- Ronald Reagan
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream.
The only way they can inherit the freedom we have known is if we fight for it, protect it,
defend it and then hand it to them with the well thought lessons of how they in their lifetime
must do the same. And if you and I don't do this, then you and I may well spend our sunset years
telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."
- Ronald Reagan

"I shall allow no man to belittle my soul by making me hate him."
- Booker T. Washington
"The secret of my success? It is simple. It is found in the Bible, 'In all thy
ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths.'"
- George Washington Carver
"[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."
- 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
"...each individual has certain basic rights that are neither conferred by nor
derived from the state. To discover where they came from it is necessary to move back
behind the dim mist of eternity, for they are God-given..."
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
I Have a Dream
I have a dream that my four children will one day live
in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content
of their character.
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter From Birmingham Jail
How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?
A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.
An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in
the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted
in eternal law and natural law.
- Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Distinctions by race are so evil, so arbitrary and insidious that a state
bound to defend the equal protection of the laws must not allow them in any public sphere."
- Thurgood Marshall, Brown v. Board of Education
"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
"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of 'Admin.' The greatest evil is not
now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done
even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But
it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried and minuted) in clean, carpeted,
warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails
and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice."
- C. S. Lewis
"When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing,
they then become capable of believing in anything."
- G.K. Chesterton
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions."
- G.K. Chesterton
"The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering;
the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else."
- Milton Steinberg