Browsing Topic Best Founding America Quotes

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

America’s founding mission was not democracy, nor any other ideology. It was what we declared it to be in the document our fathers agreed to at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 […] Democracy is not even mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption

When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself, and God does not take care to support it so that its professors are obliged to call for help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.

Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.

It is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws.

We have abundant reason to rejoice that in this Land the light of truth and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and superstition, and that every person may here worship God according to the dictates of his own heart. In this enlightened Age and in this Land of equal liberty it is our boast, that a man’s religious tenets will not forfeit the protection of the Laws, nor deprive him of the right of attaining and holding the highest Offices that are known in the United States.

[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

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.

Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths . . . ?

Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by difference of sentiment in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be deprecated.

I believe … that the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting its conduct in this.

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

I looked around for God’s judgments, but saw no signs of them.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district; all studied and appreciated as they merit; are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty.

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.

Without Virtue there can be no liberty

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

We beseech [God] to pardon our national and other transgressions.

Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can exist apart from religious principle.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in the Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the opposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

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 favors.

It may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the Civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to unsurpastion on one side or the other, or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them, will be best guarded agst. by an entire abstinence of the Gov’t from interfence in any way whatsoever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order, and protecting each sect agst. trespasses on its legal rights by others.

In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people… it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.