Virtue is not always amiable.
As the safety and prosperity of nations ultimately and essentially depend on the protection and the blessing of Almighty God, and the national acknowledgment of this truth is not only an indispensable duty which the people owe to Him.
Let every sluice of knowledge be opened and set a-flowing.
Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
But how has it happened that millions of fables, tales, legends have been blended with both Jewish and Christian revelation that have made them the most bloody religion that ever existed?
Without religion this world would be something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell.
The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.
The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.
Slavery is a foul contagion in the human character.
The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles?
I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved – the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!
Let them revere nothing but religion, morality and liberty.
Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.
Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.
Honor is truly sacred, but holds a lower rank in the scale of moral excellence than virtue. Indeed the former is part of the latter, and consequently has not equal pretensions to support a frame of government productive of human happiness.
Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots.
Make Things rather than Persons the subjects of conversations.
The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families.
No man who ever held the office of president would congratulate a friend on obtaining it.
You may have the bishop pair but I have the ultimate advantage; I am the better player!