Liberty fails if people don’t learn virtue
Here are famous quotes to explain why liberty fails — it is because ignorance destroys liberty.
“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”
— Abraham Lincoln
Honest Abe was correct. Today’s school rooms produce useful idiots to serve the needs of the State. Today’s college students have no knowledge of history or moral values. 70% think that socialism is a good form of government.
“A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them, cannot be enslaved.”
— Henry Stuber biography of Ben Franklin in the 1793 edition of Franklin’s autobiography.
“If Virtue and Knowledge are diffused among the People, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great Security” –Samuel Adams, letter to James Warren, quoted in Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, page 217, 1779
“…but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he already knows … what is laid before him.”
— attributed to Leo Tolstoy, 1894”
“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.”
— Thomas Paine, Common Sense: and The American Crisis I”, p.38
“It is certainly true that a popular government cannot flourish without virtue in the people.”
— Richard Henry Lee letter to Colonel Martin Pickett, quoted in The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, Ballagh, ed., vol. 2, p.411, 1786
“While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”
— Samuel Adams letter to James Warren quoted in The Writings of Samuel Adams, Cushing, ed., vol. 4, page 124, 1779
“The privilege against self-incrimination is neither accorded to the passive resistant, nor the person who is ignorant of his rights, nor to one indifferent therein. …. It cannot be claimed by attorney … It is valid only when insisted upon by a belligerent claimant in person.”
— US v. Johnson 76 FSupp 538
“We have no Government … capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution …. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
— John Adams letter to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798
“But should the People of America, …while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; …while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World.”
— John Adams letter to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798
“I Have Sworn Upon the Altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
— Thomas Jefferson letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush – Sep. 23, 1800
“The American mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our midst. It rejects even the assumption that human creatures could espouse a philosophy which must ultimately destroy all that is good and decent.”
— attributed to J Edgar Hoover in The Elks Magazine issue of August 1956
“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish … the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected.”
— Thomas Jefferson letter to Pierre S. Dupond de Nemours on April 24, 1816
“Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 B.C.
“It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”
— Horace Greeley
“Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trampling on the rights of others you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.” — Abraham Lincoln, September 11, 1858
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime.” — John Philpot Curran, July 10, 1790
“None are so hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. ”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities, 1809
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
— Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1782
“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
— Soren Kierkegaard
“Well, the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, but that they know so much that isn’t so!”
— October 27, 1964 Ronald Reagan speech on television “A Time for Choosing”.
[Ronald Reagan was a former Democrat]
“Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among the people. … The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. ”
— JOHN ADAMS, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law No. 3, Boston Gazette, 30 Sept. 1765
Greek Historian Polybius The Histories Book 6, section 9:
“But when a new generation arises and the democracy falls into the hands of the grandchildren of its founders, they have become so accustomed to freedom and equality that they no longer value them, and begin to aim at pre-eminence; and it is chiefly those of ample fortune who fall into this error. So when they begin to lust for power and cannot attain it through themselves or their own good qualities, they ruin their estates, tempting and corrupting the people in every possible way. And hence when by their foolish thirst for reputation they have created among the masses an appetite for gifts and the habit of receiving them, democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence. For the people, having grown accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others, as soon as they find a leader who is enterprising but is excluded from the houses of office by his penury, institute the rule of violence; and now uniting their forces massacre, banish, and plunder, until they degenerate again into perfect savages and find once more a master and monarch.U.S. Supreme Court, ADDERLEY v. FLORIDA (1966), 385 US 39
“the principal danger to civil liberty [is] in the governed unequipped to function as governors. The chief enemies of republican freedom are mental sloth, conformity, bigotry, superstition, credulity, monopoly in the market of ideas, and utter, benighted ignorance. Relying as it does on the consent of the governed, representative government cannot succeed unless the community receives enough information to grasp public issues and make sensible decisions.”
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