James Russell Lowell was asked by the French historian Francois Guizot, "How long will the American republic endure?" His reply? "As long as the ideas of the men who founded it continue to dominate."
Those ideas can be discovered through the words of the founders themselves.
We have tried to compile, according to topic, quotations of those who helped to settle and found our nation. This link will continue to be updated and upgraded as we seek to provide you with the resources you need to understand the strong Christian and Biblical worldview held by those who established this nation.
William Bradford:
"As one small candle may light a thousand, so the light kindled here has shown unto many, ye in some sort to our whole nation."
John Winthrop, aboard the ship Arabella lying off the shore of Massachusetts, wrote in 1630: ("A City On a Hill")
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God, and all professors for God's sake. We shall shame the faces of many of God's worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going. ... Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live, by obeying His voice and cleaving to Him, for He is our life and our prosperity.
Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story:
"Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the amendment to it . . . the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation if not universal indignation."
"Those who will not be governed by God, will be ruled by tyrants." William Penn
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which 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
". . . the liberties of a nation [cannot] be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the gift of God." - Thomas Jefferson (p. 7, chap 10 Constitution book)
"Statesmen may plan and speculate liberty, but it is religion and morality alone upon which freedom can securely stand. A patriot must be a religious man." John Adams
NOTE: The first official act of the Continental Congress was to authorize the printing of 20,000 Bibles to be given to the Indians.
Speaking of the high regard the founders had for the Bible and that of the first Puritans to come to New England, Daniel Webster declared in 1843:
"The Bible came with them. And it is not to be doubted, that to free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted for right views of civil liberty. The Bible is a book of faith, and a book of doctrine, and a book of morals, and a book of religion, of especial revelation from God; but it is also a book which teaches man his own individual responsibility, his own dignity, and his equality with his fellow-man." Webster, Bunker Hill Address.
A. Biblical Truth.
"Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty" 2 Corinthians 3:17
B. Founder's Views Consistent
NOTE: All 13 of the original state constitutions either refer to Almighty God as the author of liberty or declare reliance upon the hand and mercy of Providence.
"He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of Christianity will change the face of the world." Benjamin Franklin
"It is impossible to rightly govern . . . without God and the Bible." -- George Washington
"The propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained."President George Washington
"Of all the dispositions and habits that lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports . . . ." --George Washington
"Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." George Washington
"It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord." -- Abraham Lincoln, considered by many as our greatest President
"The rights of the Colonists as Christians . . . may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver . . . which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament." -- Samuel Adams
". . . religion is the basis and Foundation of Government." James Madison on June 20, 1785 (cited in Federer, Quotations book)
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." -- John Adams, 2nd President of the U.S. (John Adams, "The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229; cited in Crismier, Preserve us a Nation, p. 37)
"Religion and virtue are the only foundations . . . of republicanism and of all free government." -- John Adams
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?" -- Thomas Jefferson
"Our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits . . . Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens." Daniel Webster at bicentinneial celebration of Pilgrim's landing at Plymouth.
"The Bible came with them (the Pilgrims). And it is not to be doubted that to the free and universal reading of the Bible, in that age, men were much indebted for right views of Civil Liberty." -- Daniel Webster
"Liberty is impossible without morality, and morality is impossible without faith." Alexis de Tocqueville's warning to his French countrymen after his visit to America in the early 1800s.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke
A. Biblical Truth.
"All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23
"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9
B. Founder's Views Consistent
"But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." -- James Madison, Federalist #51
1. Gave Ourselves Credit for Prosperity ". . . we have grown giddy with good fortune, attributing the greatness of our prosperity to our own wisdom, rather than to a course of events, and a guidance over which we had no influence." Josiah Quincy (p. 42, Separation Illusion)
James Madison:
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite."
NOTE: The Constitution makes 80 grants of power to the federal government while imposing 115 prohibitions against it. To Congress alone, it yields only 20 grants of power while imposing 70 restrictions.
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