Quotes from Our Founding Fathers

If the Bible were ever to be taken out of school, though it would not be,  I lament we would be taking so much time and money to punish crime, we wouldn't have enough to prevent it.  -Benjamin Rush  Physician-scholar Founding Father & signer of Declaration of Independence

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed upon your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good, so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or discarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer laws. --Noah Webster History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 336-337, ¦49.)

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...[He] may then reflect, each one on his own integrity, and appeal to the Monitor within his breast, that he has not trifled with the sacred trust repose in him by God and his country—that he has not prostituted his honor and conscience to please a friend or a patron.  --Samuel Adams The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing, editor (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1907), Vol. IV, p. 256, in the Boston Gazette on April 16, 1781.)

Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.--Daniel Webster The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1853), Vol. II, p. 108, from remarks made at a public reception by the ladies of Richmond, Virginia, on October 5, 1840.