Witty Wednesdays [3]

Please be sure to view the post below this to see more pictures of our new house. I know I just posted yesterday, but I want to be consistent with "Witty Wednesdays" as well.

Today (or tonight, rather) features John Adams.

All quotes are taken from "America's God and Country".


John Adams

--- "Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.

      The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our people in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty."

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

---"As no truth is more clearly taught in the Volume Of Inspiration, nor any more fully demonstrated by the experience of all ages, than that a deep sense and a due acknowledgment of the growing providence of a Supreme Being and of the accountableness of men to Him as the searcher of hearts and righteous distributor of rewards and punishments are conducive equally to the happiness of individuals and to the well-being of communities....

      I have thought proper to recommend, and I hereby recommend accordingly, that Thursday, the twenty-fifth day of April next, be observed throughout the United States of America as a day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer;

      that the citizens on that day abstain, as far as may be, from their secular occupation, and devote the time to the sacred duties of religion, in public and in private;

      that they call to mind out numerous offenses against the most high God, confess them before Him with the sincerest penitence, implore his pardoning mercy, through the Great Mediator and Redeemer, for our past transgressions, and that through the grace of His Holy Spirit, we may be disposed and enabled to yield a more suitable obedience to his righteous requisitions in time to come; that He would interpose to arrest the progress of that impiety and licentiousness in principle and practice so offensive to Himself and so ruinous to mankind;

      that He would make us deeply sensible that 'righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people' (Proverbs 14:34)."

---"Have you ever found in history, one single example of a Nation thoroughly corrupted that was afterwards restored to virtue?....And without virtue, there can be no political liberty....Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry?

     Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance, vice and folly?....I believe no effort in favour of virtue is lost..."

Once again, please leave your favorite quotes (from anyone, not just a U.S. founding father) in the comments section. And don't forget to view the new post below.