Daniel Webster and John Adams

Founders and Conscience

Daniel Webster

But when the people neglect the precepts of the Bible, when the public mind becomes vitiated and corrupt, laws are a nullity and constitutions are but wastepaper.

John Adams

We have no constitutional government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Corruption, revenge, ambition, or envy will 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 government of any other.

John Adams

Founders and Conscience

John Adams

For I have examined all religions, as well as my narrow sphere, my straightened means and my busy life would allow; and the result is that the Bible is the best book in the world. It contains more philosophy than all the libraries I have seen.

Suppose a nation of people in some distant region should regulate their conduct by the precepts of the Bible. Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity toward his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God. What a utopia, what a paradise, would this region be.

Edmund Burke and Daniel Webster

Founders and Conscience

Edmund Burke

Daniel Webster

True religion is the foundation of society. When that is once shaken by contempt, the whole fabric can be neither stable nor lasting.

Daniel Webster

And all the miseries and evils which men suffer from; vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, precede from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

Burke and Adams

Founders and Conscience

Edmund Burke

John Adams

What sort of a thing must be a nation of ferocious and sordid barbarians, destitute of religion, honor or manly pride, possessing nothing at present, and hoping for nothing hereafter? Their liberty is not liberal. Their science is presumptuous ignorance. Their humanity is savage and brutal.

John Adams

Hence, they could never be governed but by force since neither virtue, prudence, wisdom nor anything else sufficed to restrain their passions.

Founders Conscience

Founders Conscience

Abraham Lincoln

We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth, and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Founders and Conscience

Founders and Conscience

George Washington

Can it be, that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligations desert our oaths in courts of justice?

Thomas Jefferson

How can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God?

George Washington

Founders and Conscience

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 patriot who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, thse firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.

George Washington

Founders and Conscience

George Washington

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that virtue and morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Edmund Burke

Founders and Conscience

Edmund Burke

For freedom without virtue is not freedom but license to pursue whatever passions prevail in the intemperate mind.

Benjamin Franklin

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

Thomas Jefferson

Founders Conscience
Thomas Jefferson
For Constitutional freedom of religion is the most inalienable and sacred of all human rights! That Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.