The Deterioration of Government

The deterioration of every government begins with
the decay of the principles on which it was founded
~Charles-Louis de Secondat

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• “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.” ~John Adams (1756)
  

• “No man in his senses can hesitate in choosing to be free, rather than a slave.” ~Alexander Hamilton (1774)
  

• “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.” ~John Adams (1756)
  

• “Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty.” ~Louis D. Brandeis
  

• “It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives.” ~John Adams (1756)
  

• “Without religion, I believe that learning does real mischief to the morals and principles of mankind.” ~Benjamin Rush (1783)
  

• “There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1785)
  

• “National defense is one of the cardinal duties of a statesman.” ~John Adams (1815)
  

• “Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war. It leaves men no choice but to fight to seize political power — to rob or be robbed, to kill or be killed. … Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production.” ~Ayn Rand (1905-1982)
  

• “There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate upon real favours from Nation to Nation. ‘Tis an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.” ~George Washington (1796)