“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

“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

“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 be no 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

“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 at Charlestown, 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

“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

“Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956) American Writer

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
— Henry L. Mencken (1880-1956) American Writer

"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.

"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

"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 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

"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