“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
—  Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.

“A democracy is a volcano, which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption, and carry desolation in their way.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-1808) Founding Father and framer of the First Amendment to the Constitution

 

“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine percent.”
—  Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.

“Pure democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state, it is very subjet to caprice and the madness of popular rage.”
— John Witherspoon (1722-1794) Educator, Economist, Minister, Writer & Founding Father

“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-1808) Founding Father and framer of the First Amendment to the Constitution

“We have seen the tumults of democracy terminate, in France, as they have everywhere terminated, in despotism.”
— Gouverneur Morris (1752-1816) Statesman, Diplomat, writer of the final draft of the Constitution

“Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they, therefore, who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments.”
— Charles Carroll (1737-1832) Founding Father and Leader from Maryland

“As piety and virtue support the honor and happiness of every community, they are peculiarly requisite in a free government. Virtue is the spirit of a republic; for where all power is derived from the people, all depends on their good disposition. If they are impious … all is lost.”
— Samuel Cooper (1725-1783) Pastor of the Brattle Street Church Boston, Pastor of  John Hancock, James Bowdoin, and John Adams

“That the only foundation for a useful education, in a republic, is to be laid in religion. Without this there can beno virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty; and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of Independence

“In democracy … there are commonly tumults and disorders … Therefore a pure democracy is generally a very bad government. It is often the most tyrannical government on earth.”
— Noah Webster (1758-1843)  Father of the Dictionary & American Patriot

“All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-1808) Founding Father and framer of the First Amendment to the Constitution

“Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination. On the contrary, laws, under no form of government, are better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness more effectually dispensed to mankind.”
— George Washington (1732-1799) Father of the Country, 1st President of the United States

“Upon my return from the army to Baltimore in the winter of 1777, I sat next to John Adams in Congress, and upon my whispering to him and asking him if he thought we should succeed in our struggle with Great Britain, he answered me, ‘Yes—if we fear God and repent of our sins.’ This anecdote will, I hope, teach my boys that it is not necessary to disbelieve Christianity or to renounce morality in order to arrive at the highest political usefulness or fame. Again in Baltimore I asked John Adams if he thought we were qualified for a republican forms of government, He said, “No—and never should be till we were ambitious to be poor.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of Independence

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed. … No truth is more evident to my mind than that of the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

“The Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable, in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence.”
— Noah Webster (1758-1843)  Father of the Dictionary & American Patriot

“To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom [& liberty], and approximate the miseries of complete despotism. All efforts to destroy the foundations of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present Republican forms of government, and all the blessings [God given] which flow from them, must fall with them.”
— Jedediah Morse (1761-1826) Father of American Geography & Educator, “Election Sermon” given atCharlestown, MA, April 25, 1799

“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.

“The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness, which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be, liberty.”
— Fisher Ames (1758-1808) Founding Father and framer of the First Amendment to the Constitution

“If they proceed in it (removing the Bible from schools), they will do more in half a century in extirpating our religion than Bolingbroke or Voltaire could have effected in a thousand years. …I lament that we waste so much time and money in punishing crimes and take so little pains to prevent them. We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government; that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible; for this divine book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and all those sober and frugal virtues which constitute the soul of republicanism.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of Independence

“There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is ‘an empire of laws, and not of men.’ That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury & Secretary of State

“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 (1743-1826) Third President of the United States

“The British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“It is easy to see that when republican virtue fails, slavery ensues.”
— Thomas Paine (1736-1809) Patriot, Author & Pamphleteer

“The Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Dutch, all lost their public spirit, their republican principles and habits, and their republican forms of government when they lost the modesty and domestic virtues of their women. The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families. In vain are schools, academies, and universities instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years. The mothers are the earliest and most important instructors of youth. The vices and examples of the parents can not be concealed from the children. The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity, and humanity.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“But between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”
— John Marshall (1755-1835) House Member, Secretary of State  and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court

“Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.”
— James Madison (1751-1836) Father of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”
— Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) Third President of the United States

“As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”
— James Madison (1751-1836) Father of the Constitution, 4th President of the United States

“Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honour, power and glory, established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, nor any real liberty: and this public passion must be superiour to all private passions.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“The term republic is of very vague application in every language. Witness the self-styled republics of Holland,Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Poland. Were I to assign to this term a precise and definite idea, I would say that, purely and simply, it means a government by its citizens in mass, acting directly and personally, according to rules established by the majority: and that every other government is more or less republican, in proportion as it has in its composition, more or less of this ingredient of the direct action of the citizens. Such a government is evidently restrained to very narrow limits of space and population. I doubt if it would be practicable beyond the extent of a New England township. The first shade from this pure element, which, like that of pure vital air, cannot sustain life of itself, would be where the powers of the government, being divided, should be exercised each by representatives chosen by the citizens either pro hac vice, or for such short terms as should render secure the duty of expressing the will of their constituents. This I should consider as the nearest approach to a pure republic, which is practicable on a large scale of country or population. …

The purest republican feature in the government of our own State is the House of Representatives. The Senate is equally so the first year, less the second, and so on. The Executive still less, because not chosen by the people directly. The Judiciary seriously anti-republican … we may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition: and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people, are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, 1 am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
—  Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.

“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate (lost all regard to good principles,virtue or decency, dashed, broken or ruined in morals, shameless in wickedness) are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them.”
— Joseph Story (1779-1845) Lawyer, Supreme Court Justice & influential commentators on the U.S. Constitution

“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature; it is what neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortunate that awaits our State constitution, as well as all others.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury & Secretary of State

“The only foundation for a useful education in 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.Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mohammed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles. But the religion I mean to recommend in this place is the religion of Jesus Christ. It is foreign to my purpose to hint at the arguments which establish the truth of the Christian revelation. My only business is to declare that all its doctrines and precepts are calculated to promote the happiness of society and the safety and well-being of civil government. A Christian cannot fail of being a republican*.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of Independence

“Without wishing to damp the ardor of curiosity or influence the freedom of inquiry, I will hazard a prediction that, after the most industrious and impartial researchers, the longest liver of you all will find no principles, institutions or systems of education more fit in general to be transmitted to your posterity than those you have received from your ancestors.”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education, and family. The opinion advanced in the Notes on Virginia is undoubtedly correct, that foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity; and to its particular customs and manners. They will also entertain opinions on government congenial with those under which they have lived; or if they should be led hither from a preference to ours, how extremely unlikely is it that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism?”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury & Secretary of State

“Christianity is in its essence, its doctrines and its forms, republican. It teaches our descent from a common parent: it inculcates the natural equality of mankind; and it points to our origin and our end; to our nativity and our graves, and to our immortal destinies, as illustrations of this impressive truth.”
— DeWitt Clinton (1769–1828) State Senator, Governor of New York, and naturalist

“If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.”
—  Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, 3rd President of the U. S.

“As riches increase and accumulate in few hands, as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature.”
— Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) Lawyer, Secretary of the Treasury & Secretary of State

“I have always considered Christianity as the strong ground of republicanism. The spirit is opposed, not only to the splendor, but even to the very forms of monarchy, and many of its precepts have for their objects republican liberty and equality as well as simplicity, integrity, and economy in government. It is only necessary for republicanism to ally itself to the Christian religion to overturn all the corrupted political and religious institutions of the world.”
— Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) Founding Father& signer of the Declaration of Independence

“From all that I had read of history and government, of human life and manners, I had drawn this conclusion, that the manners of women were the most infallible barometer to ascertain the degree of morality and virtue in a nation. All that I have since read, and all the observations I have made in different nations, have confirmed me in this opinion. The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not. The Jews, the – Greeks, the Romans, the Dutch, all lost their public spirit, their republican principles and habits, and their republican forms of government, when they lost the modesty and domestic virtues of their women.

What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money; and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.

The foundations of national morality must be laid in private families. In vain are schools, academies, and universities, instituted, if loose principles and licentious habits are impressed upon children in their earliest years. The mothers are the earliest and most important instructors of youth. The vices and examples of the parents cannot be concealed from the children. How is it possible that children can have any just sense of the sacred obligations of morality or religion, if, from their earliest infancy, they learn that their mothers live in habitual infidelity to then fathers, and their fathers in as constant infidelity to their mothers? Besides, the catholic doctrine is, that the contract of marriage is not only a civil and moral engagement, but a sacrament; one of the most solemn vows and oaths of religious devotion. Can they then believe religion, and morality too, anything more than a veil, a cloak, a hypocritical pretext, for political purposes of decency and conveniency?”
— John Adams (1797-1801) Second President of the United States and Patriot

“Independent of its connection with human destiny hereafter, the fate of republican government is indissolubly bound up with the fate of the Christian religion, and a people who reject its holy faith will find themselves the slaves of their own evil passions and of arbitrary power.”
— Lewis Cass (1782–1866) 22nd United States Secretary of State

“It is remarkable how men of comprehensive views, and free from sectarian bias, have agreed with regard to The RepublicanIsm of Christianity.”
— Edwin Hall – Pastor in Norwalk, Connecticut,  from the book The Puritans and Their Principles: -1851