A Worthy Quote

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Founder's Quote Daily

"In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate - look to his character...." --Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education, 1789

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"A good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous." --George Washington, letter to Steptoe Washington, 1790

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt." --Samuel Adams, essay in The Public Advertiser, 1749

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Founder's Quote Daily

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

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Founder's Quote Daily

"It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution." --Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia Query 19, 1781

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual, and slavery must ensue." --John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, 1776

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Your love of liberty -- your respect for the laws -- your habits of industry -- and your practice of the moral and religious obligations, are the strongest claims to national and individual happiness." --George Washington, letter to the residents of Boston, 1789

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Founder's Quote Daily

"No compact among men ... can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable, and if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other." --George Washington, draft of first Inaugural Address, 1789

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The first transactions of a nation, like those of an individual upon his first entrance into life make the deepest impression, and are to form the leading traits in its character." --George Washington, letter to John Armstrong, 1788

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Founder's Quote Daily

"Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters." --Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." --George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in the happy hour when the establishment of American Liberty, upon the most firm and solid foundations shall enable us to return to our Private Stations in the bosom of a free, peacefully and happy Country." --George Washington, address to the New York legislature, 1775

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual -- or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country." --Samuel Adams, in the Boston Gazette, 1781

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"The citizens of the United States of America have the right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were by the indulgence of one class of citizens that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support." --George Washington, letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, 1790

[nChrist]

Founder's Quote Daily

"No nation was ever ruined by trade, even seemingly the most disadvantageous." --Benjamin Franklin and George Whaley, Principles of Trade, 1774