QUOTATIONS FOR CITIZENShttp://thirdworldtraveler.com/Authors/QuotationsToMakeUSThink.html

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. Benjamin Franklin

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/benjamin_franklin.html

http://freedomkeys.com/vigil.htm

EXCELLENT LIST ABOVE“It is not enough to do your best; you must first know what to do, and then do your best.”

-- W. Edward Deming

“What you can do or dream, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” –Goethe

“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” ---“Shake- Spear”

"The human race divides itself politically into those who want to be controlled, and those who have no such desire." -- Robert A. Heinlein

"Government, when it is examined, turns out to be nothing more nor less than a group of fallible men with the political force to act as though they were infallible." -- Robert LeFevre, in his essay, Aggression is Wrong

 

"Laws that forbid the carrying of arms. . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes. . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." --  Jefferson's "Commonplace Book," 1774-1776, quoting from On Crimes and Punishment, by criminologist Cesare Beccaria, 1764

"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1) Those who fear and distrust the people . . . . 2) Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe . . . depository of the public interest." -- Thomas Jefferson

"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." -- Thomas Jefferson

Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.      - Horace Mann

"Any time you give power to government, it will be abused, it will be enlarged, it will be used in ways you never intended." – Harry Browne on The Drudge Report 7-31-99

"If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't". – Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." – Dr. Milton Friedman

"The kind of man who wants the government to adopt and enforce his ideas is always the kind of man whose ideas are idiotic." – H. L. Mencken

"Live free or die." – Gen. John Stark, the hero of the battles of Bennington and Bunker Hill during the American Revolution.

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." — Edmund Burke

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Learned Hand, 1944

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither." – Thomas Jefferson (and Ben Franklin – similar quote)

"In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot." -- Mark Twain

"I would rather die with a sense of personal responsibility than to live without one." – Bill Maher, on Larry King Live, 8-4-2000

"Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent." – Napoleon

"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world... Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." – Margaret Mead

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds..." – Samuel Adams

"Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance." -- Goethe

"When is the last time government admitted it might have made a mistake and canceled a program?" –  Thomas Bray

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."-- Henry David Thoreau

"Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." -- Winston Churchill

"When the freedom they wished for most was the freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and never was free again." -- Edith Hamilton

"Society has a tendency to honor its living conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Wayne Dyer

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." — George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutions, 1903

"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

"Government does not solve problems. It subsidizes them." — Ronald Reagan

"Government is the problem, not the solution." — Ronald Reagan

"The nature of government bureaucracies and political organizations is such that the vast majority of the people in them are pathetic mediocrities who accumulate power over others as a neurotic substitute for their missing sense of self-worth, a sense which becomes ever-more elusive as time erodes any likelihood of their leaving for the real world and creating new values which never existed before instead of stealing and redistributing old ones which did." – Bert Rand

"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." – Dr. Thomas Sowell

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams

"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?... I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry, Richmond, VA

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free ... it expects what never was and never will be." -- Thomas Jefferson

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." -- Thomas Jefferson.

"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels ... to govern him?" --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801

"From time to time we've been tempted to believe this society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?" -- Ronald Reagan: lst Inaugural, 1981

"A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police." -- Ludwig von Mises

"There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions." -- Dr. Milton Friedman, as interviewed in "Is America No. 1?" by John Stossel .

"Benevolence in public institutions has a short half-life no matter how noble its original intentions." -- Richard A. Epstein, Principles for a Free Society

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."  -- Dr. Milton Friedman, Nobel-Prize-winning economist

"When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down.  When a government enterprise fails, it is expanded."  -- Dr. Milton Friedman

"Government people are not saints." -- Bert Rand

“If you take bad schools and only add more money, then you will only get more bad schools”

“If you take incompetent and ignorant teachers and only add more money, then you will only get more incompetent and ignorant teachers”

“The missing ingredient that must be added if you want real and beneficial change to public schools (or any other bureaucracy) is citizenship – educated, committed and effective citizenship.” -- anonymous

30 Famous Quotations

Here is a collection of famous quotations about democracy, citizenship, freedom, liberty and civics. Select a favorite and then search either in the library or on the Internet to find out more about the person who said it and share what you find with your classmates.”

 

 

 

Winston Churchill “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Edmund Burke “Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could do only a little.”

James Madison “The effect of [a representative democracy is] to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation…”

Benjamin Rush “There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.”

John Adams “ Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who, have a right …and a desire to know.”

Thomas Jefferson “That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.”

Dwight Eisenhower “Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free men.”

Eleanor Roosevelt “Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.”

Aristotle “The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”

James Buchanan “I like the noise of democracy.”

Jonathan D. Casper “The freedom to express varying and often opposing ideas is essential to variety of conceptions of democracy. If democracy is viewed as essentially a process – a way in which collective decisions for a society are made – free expression is crucial to the openness of the process and to such characteristics as elections, representation of interests, and the like.”

Alexis de Tocqueville “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

Robert F. Kennedy “At the heart of western freedom and democracy is the belief that the individual man…is the touchstone of value, and all society, groups, the state, exist for his benefit. Therefore the enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and abiding practice of any western society.”

Alan Keyes “The act of voting is one opportunity for us to remember that our whole way of life is predicated on the capacity of ordinary people to judge carefully and well.”

Abraham Lincoln “Ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets, and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections.”

Thomas Paine “…the individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right, entered into a compact with each other to produce a government: and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise, and the only principle on which they have a right to exist.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt “The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind – men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining

themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves.”

Margaret Thatcher “All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.”

E. B. White “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.”

John F. Kennedy “We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”

Mohandas K. Gandhi “To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.”

Thomas Jefferson “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

Benjamin Franklin “They that give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Henry David Thoreau “That government is best which governs least.”

John Locke “The people cannot delegate to government the power to do anything which would be unlawful for them to do themselves.”

Lord Acton “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Isaac Asimov “Violence is the last resort of the incompetent.”

Ramsey Clark “A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you.”

Karl Marx “If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded.”

Thomas Paine “Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.”

Walt Whitman “Did you, too, O friend, suppose democracy was only for elections, for politics, and for a party name? I say democracy is only of use there that it may pass on and come to its flower and fruit in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between [people], and their beliefs – in religion, literature, colleges and schools – democracy in all public and private life…”

You can find these and other quotations on the following sites:

http://www.ncsl.org/public/trust/quotes.htm http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_democracy.html

Quotations

from the book

The Ralph Nader Reader

p36Voter tools include a binding none-of-the-above option on the ballot, which would trigger a new election if it received the largest number of votes; term limitations of twelve years; public financing of campaigns through well-publicized taxpayer checkoffs; easier voter registration and ballot access rules; binding initiative, referendum and recall authority in all fifty states and a non-binding national referendum procedure.

p37A new audience television and radio network, whose studios would provide one hour of prime and drive-time programming on every licensed station, would be set up. It would be controlled by viewer and listener members in accordance with the principle that the airwaves, which we legally own together as Americans, should be more effectively controlled by and for the owners' direct benefit.

p41The owners of the public lands, pension funds, savings accounts, and the public airwaves are the American people, who have essentially little or no control over their pooled assets or their commonwealth.

p43Federal law says that the public owns the public airwaves which are now leased for free by the Federal Communications Commission to television and radio companies

p44Presently the electronic broadcasting systems are overwhelmingly used for entertainment, advertising and redundant news, certainly not a fair reflection of what a serious society needs to communicate in a complex age.

p58... the tax code subsidizes foreign investment by U.S. corporations, that the Export-Import Bank provides subsidies as loan guarantees for U.S. multinationals operating abroad and that a federal agency, called OPIC, insures these companies against political risks.

p65The people legally own major national assets: $3 trillion in pension funds, more than $2 trillion in savings deposits, hundreds of billions more in insurance company equity, federal lands (one-third of America), large blocs of shares of companies on the stock exchanges, as well as the airwaves. Although the people own these assets, they do not control any of them. Corporations do. Presidents have ample backup power to preserve this split between ownership and control, but they and Congress have little backup power to make such ownership mean control.

p66Societies rot from the top down.

p79... we need a constitutional amendment that declares that corporations are not persons and that they are

only entitled to statutory protections conferred by legislatures and through referendums. Only then will the Constitution become the exclusive preserve of those whom the Framers sought to protect: real people.

p91Our history has demonstrated that the well-being of society springs from the growth of daily, active citizenship that provides an enabling environment for good leaders to come forth. Every significant social movement m this century has sprung from active citizens fighting for their cause - women's suffrage, workers' rights, civil rights, environmental and consumer protection, peace. Put in today's terms, citizens in our country need to spend more time being citizens.

p133General counsel and vice-president of Ford Motor Company, William T. Gossett, 1957, about the modern business corporation:

"The modern stock corporation is a social and economic institution that touches every aspect of our lives; in many ways it is an institutionalized expression of our way of life. During the past 50 years, industry in corporate form has moved from the periphery to the very center of our social and economic existence. Indeed, it is not inaccurate to say that we live in a corporate society."

p133Peter Drucker, 1996, fresh from a study of General Motors, about the modern business corporation:

"What we look for in analyzing American society is therefore the institution which sets the standard for the way of life and the mode of living of our citizens; which leads, molds, and directs; which determines our perspective on our own society; around which crystallize our social problems and to which we look for their solution ... And this ... in our society today is the large corporation."

p149William Greider"Leaving aside the financial and economic complexities, the savings and loan bailout is most disturbing as a story of politics-a grotesque case study of how representative democracy has been deformed."

p149Representative Jim Leach, R-Iowa, then a House Banking Committee member and now the Committee chair, told the Los Angeles Times in I989, about the S&L scandal:

"At every turn, any effort to rein in the thrifts' powers and accountability has been shackled. If there ever has been a case for campaign finance reform, this is it."

p149In I996, Congress quietly handed over to existing broadcasters the rights to broadcast digital television on the public airwaves-a conveyance worth $70 billion-in exchange for... nothing.

Although the public owns the airwaves, the broadcasters have never paid for the rights to use them. New digital technologies now make possible the broadcast of digital television programming (the equivalent of the switch from analog records to digitalized compact disks), and the broadcasters sought rights to new portions of the airwaves. In recent years, the Federal Communications Commission has, properly, begun to recognize the large monetary value of the licenses it conveys to use the public airwaves-including for cell phones, beepers and similar uses-and typically auctions licenses. The I996 Telecommunications Act, however, prohibited such an auction `) for distribution of digital television licenses, the most valuable of public airwave properties, and mandated that they be given to existing broadcasters.

p150The 1872 Mining ActThis nearly I30-year-old relic of efforts to settle the West allows mining companies to claim federal lands for $5 an acre or less and then take gold, silver, lead or other hard-rock minerals with no royalty payments to the public treasury Thanks to the anachronistic I872 Mining Act, mining companies-including foreign companies-extract billions of dollars worth of minerals a year from federal lands, royalty free.

From I987 to I994, the mining companies gave $I7 million in campaign contributions to congressional candidates-a small price to pay to preserve their right to extract $26 billion worth of minerals, royalty free, during the same period. More recently, in the I997-I998 election cycle, the industry- led by the National Mining Association, Cyprus Amax Minerals, Drummond, Phelps Dodge and Peabody Coal rained more than $2 million in contributions on congressional candidates.

p155We have 179 law schools and probably only fifteen of them offer a single course of seminar on corporate crime.

p156We own the public airwaves and the Federal Communications Commission is our real estate agent. The radio and TV stations are the tenants who are given licenses to dominate their part of the spectrum 24 hours a day and for four hours a day ...

p156You pay more for your auto license than the biggest TV station pays for its broadcast license.

p156We have the greatest communications system in the world and we have the most demeaning subject matter and the most curtailed airing of public voices.

p157The dismantling of democracy is perhaps now the most urgent aspect of the corporatization of our society.

p342Our society has the resources and the skills to keep injustice at bay and to elevate the human condition to a state of enduring compassion and creative fulfillment. How we go about using the resources and skills has consequences which extend well beyond our national borders to all the earth's people.

p337It is what citizens do between elections that decides whether elections are to be meaningful exercises of debate and decision or whether they are to remain expensive contests between tweedledees and tweedledums.

p337... the blessings of liberty, will not come to pass until we cease viewing citizen involvement as just a privilege and begin defining our daily work to include citizenship toward public problems as an obligation.

p338There seems to be less and less relationship between the country's total wealth and its willingness to solve the ills and injustices that beset it.

p343Democratic systems are based on the principle that all power comes from the people.

p344Too often, people who are properly outraged over injustice concentrate so much on decrying the abuses and demanding the desired reforms that they never build the instruments to accomplish their objectives in a lasting manner.

p352"Our country ... when right, to be kept right. When wrong, to be put right."

p353Citizenship has an obligation to cleanse patriotism of the misdeeds done in its name abroad.

p353There is no reason why patriotism has to be so heavily associated, in the minds of the young as well as adults, with military exploits, jets and missiles. Citizenship must include the duty to advance our ideals actively into practice for a better community, country and world, if peace is to prevail over war.

p354A patriotism manipulated by the government asks only for a servile nod from its subjects. A new patriotism requires a thinking assent from its citizens.

p404The information age has produced much information. We are inundated with data and information, less so with knowledge, even less with judgment, and almost not at all with wisdom.

p429The public owns the airwaves. We lease it 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to broadcasters who pay no rent.

p431The current regulatory regime for radio thwarts the First Amendment rights and interests of most Americans. We speak little, if at all, on our own airwaves, while the wealthy may speak through radio by controlling who uses their stations and for what purposes.

p431What good is freedom of speech if nobody can afford it? Is speech truly free if only the wealthy can buy it?

Ralph Nader page

Index of Website

Home Page

http://www.liberty1.org/virtue.htm

above are quotes on liberty and virtue

QUOTES ON LIBERTY AND VIRTUE

Compiled and Edited by J. David Gowdy

lib-er-ty\ 'lib-er-te` \ n [ME, fr. MF liberte', fr. L libertat, libertas, fr. liber free]1. FREEDOM 2. POWER 3. CHOICE 4. RIGHT 5. PRIVILEGE 6. DUTY 7. STANDARD

vir-tue\ 'ver-(,)chu: \ n [ME virtu, fr. OF, L virtut-, virtus strength, virtue] 1. MORALITY 2. POWER 3. VALOR 4. MERIT 5. CHASTITY 6. FORCE 7. AUTHORITY

"[V]irtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government."George Washington

"Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? "George Washington

"[T]here is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists . . . an idissoluble union between virtue and happiness." 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 tribute to patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness -- these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. . . . reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles."George Washington

"The aggregate happiness of the society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government . . . ."George Washington

"Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppresive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people."George Washington

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

"A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."Thomas Jefferson

"No government can continue good but under the control of the people; and . . . . their minds are to be informed

by education what is right and what wrong; to be encouraged in habits of virtue and to be deterred from those of vice . . . . These are the inculcations necessary to render the people a sure basis for the structure and order of government."Thomas Jefferson

"It is in the manners and spirit of a people which preseve a republic in vigour. . . . degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats into the heart of its laws and constitution."Thomas Jefferson

"[In a republic, according to Montesquieu in Spirit of the Laws, IV,ch.5,] 'virtue may be defined as the love of the laws and of our country. As such love requires a constant preference of public to private interest, it is the source of all private virtue; for they are nothing more than this very preference itself... Now a government is like everything else: to preserve it we must love it . . . Everything, therefore, depends on establishing this love in a republic; and to inspire it ought to be the principal business of education; but the surest way of instilling it into children is for parents to set them an example.'" Thomas Jefferson: copied into his Commonplace Book.

"When virtue is banished, ambition invades the minds of those who are disposed to receive it, and avarice possesses the whole community."Montesquieu (written by Thomas Jefferson in his Common Place Book).

"Liberty . . . is the great parent of science and of virtue; and . . . a nation will be great in both always in proportion as it is free."Thomas Jefferson

"The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue."Thomas Jefferson

"Without virtue, happiness cannot be."Thomas Jefferson

"The institution of delegated power implies that there is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence."Alexander Hamilton

"To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea."James Madison

"The aim of every political Constitution, is or ought to be first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."James Madison

". . . Virtue, morality, and religion. This is the armor, my friend, and this alone that renders us invincible. These are the tactics we should study. If we lose these, we are conquered, fallen indeed . . . so long as our manners and principles remain sound, there is no danger." Patrick Henry

"Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance,

frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."Patrick Henry

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."John Adams

"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."John Adams

"Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul."John Adams

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics."John Adams

"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."John Adams

"Whenever we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary." Thomas Paine

"[N]either the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen onto any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man."Samuel Adams

"The diminuition of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals."Samuel Adams

"[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous."Samuel Adams

"No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous." Samuel Johnson

"[A] free government . . . cannot be supported without Virtue."Samuel Williams

"A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue." Jean Jacques Rousseau

"Machiavel, discoursing on these matters, finds virtue to be so essentially necessary to the establishment and preservation of liberty, that he thinks it impossible for a corrupted people to set up a good government, or for a tyranny to be introduced if they be virtuous; and makes this conclusion, 'That where the matter (that is, the body of the people) is not corrupted, tumults and disorders do not hurt; and where it is corrupted, good laws do no

good:' which being confirmed by reason and experience, I think no wise man has ever contradicted him."Algernon Sidney

"[L]iberty cannot be preserved, if the manners of the people are corrupted . . ."Algernon Sidney

"[A]ll popular and well-mixed governments [republics] . . . are ever established by wise and good men, and can never be upheld otherwise than by virtue: The worst men always conspiring against them, they must fall, if the best have not power to preserve them. . . . [and] unless they be preserved in a great measure free from vices . . . ." Algernon Sidney

"Fruits are always of the same nature with the seeds and roots from which they come, and trees are known by the fruits they bear: as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, that society of men which constitutes a government upon the foundation of justice, virtue, and the common good, will always have men to promote those ends; and that which intends the advancement of one man's desire and vanity, will abound in those that will foment them."Algernon Sidney

"[I]f vice and corruption prevail, liberty cannot subsist; but if virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power cannot be established."Algernon Sidney

"If the public safety be provided, liberty and propriety secured, justice administered, virtue encouraged, vice suppressed, and the true interest of the nation advanced, the ends of government are accomplished . . ."Algernon Sidney

"[L]iberty without virtue would be no blessing to us."Benjamin Rush

"Without virtue there can be no liberty."Benjamin Rush

"No free government can stand without virtue in the people, and a lofty spirit of partiotism." Andrew Jackson

"Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits." Daniel Webster

"[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity."Daniel Webster

"Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith."Horace Greely

"What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint."Edmund Burke

"Manners are of more importance than laws. Upon them in great measure the laws depend. The law touches us but here and there, and now and then. Manners are what vex and smooth, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation, like that of the air we breathe in. They give their whole form and color to our lives. According to their quality, they aid morals, they support them, or they totally destroy them." Edmund Burke

"It is better to cherish virtue and humanity, by leaving much to free will, even with some loss of the object , than to attempt to make men mere machines and instruments of political benevolence. The world on the whole will gain by a liberty, without which virtue cannot exist."Edmund Burke

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsel of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."Edmund Burke

"Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist."Edmund Burke

"[T]he very best forms of government are vain without public virtue . . . ."William A. Cocke

"No polity can be devised which shall perpetuate freedom among a people that are dead to honor and integrity. Liberty and virtue are twin sisters, and the best fabric in the world . . . ."James H. Thornwell

"[P]erfect freedom consists in obeying the dictates of right reason, and submitting to natural law. When a man goes beyond or contrary to the law of nature and reason, he . . . introduces confusion and disorder into society . . . [thus] where licentiousness begins, liberty ends."Samuel West

"When was public virtue to be found when private was not?"William Cowper

"Unless virtue guide us our choice must be wrong."William Penn

"If men be good, government cannot be bad."William Penn

"The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful and virtuous."Frederick Douglas

"[R]eligion, morality and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged."Northwest Ordinance of 1787

"I consider the domestic virtue of the Americans as the principle source of all their other qualities. It acts as a promoter of industry, as a stimulus to enterprise and as the most powerful restraint of public vice. . . . No government could be established on the same principle as that of the United States with a different code of morals."Francis Grund

"The American Constitution is remarkable for its simplicity; but it can only suffice a people habitually correct in their actions, and would be utterly inadequate to the wants of a different nation. Change the domestic habits of the Americans, their religious devotion, and their high respect for morality, and it will not be necessary to change a single letter in the Constitution in order to vary the whole form of their government."Francis Grund

"History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster." Douglas MacArthur

"[Liberty] considers religion as the safeguard of morality, and morality as the best security of law and the surest pledge of the duration of freedom."Alexis de Tocqueville

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her comodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies; and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast commerce, and it was not there. Not until I visited the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." An old adage attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville

"No government at any level, or at any price, can afford, on the crime side, the police necessary to assure our safety unless the overwhelming majority of us are guided by an inner, personal code of morality. And you will not get that inner, personal code of morality unless children are brought up in a family -- a family that gives them the affection they seek, that makes them feel they belong, that guides them to the future, and that will build continuity in future generations. . . . the greatest inequality today is not inequality of wealth or income. It is the inequality between the child brought up in a loving, supportive family and one who has been denied that birthright."Lady Margaret Thatcher

"A state is nothing more than a reflection of its citizens; the more decent the citizens, the more decent the state."

Ronald Reagan

"Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues." George Will

"The ultimate success of this government and the stability of its institutions, its progress in all that can make a nation honored, depend upon its adherence to the principles of truth and righteousness." John Lord

"Righteousness exalteth a nation." Proverbs 14:34

"The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan

"I have wondered at times about what the Ten Commandment's would have looked like if Moses had run them through the U.S. Congress."- Ronald Reagan

"The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination." - Ronald Reagan

"Government is like a baby: An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." - Ronald Reagan

" The nearest thing to eternal life we will ever see on this earth is a government program." - Ronald Reagan

"Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan

"No arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. - Ronald Reagan

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above are quotes with portraits on liberty

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quotes on freedom above

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