Date: 1784
"In general the faculties of the mind must be expanded to a certain degree, before religion will take root, or flourish among a people; and a certain proportion of civil liberty is necessary, on which to found that expansion of the mind, which moral or religious liberty requires."
preview | full record— Ramsay, James (1733-1789)
Date: 1784, 1804
"When this is the case the hedge (to our feelings) is broken down, and we lie exposed to every temptation; as says the Psalmist--'Why hast thou broken down her hedges, so that all they that pass by the way do pluck her?' Psal. lxxx. 12"
preview | full record— Huntington, William (1745-1813)
Date: 1787
"They [the Indians] will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1787
"This will in some measure stop the increase of this great political and moral evil, while the minds of our citizens may be ripening for a complete emancipation of human nature."
preview | full record— Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826)
Date: 1787
"The young man comparing the conduct, speeches, and pursuits of his father with those of other men, the one watering the rational part of his soul, and the others the concupiscible and irascible, he delivers up the government within himself to a middle power, that which is irascible and fond of c...
preview | full record— Adams, John (1735-1826)
Date: 1787
"And this should be expected, wherever a Christian government is extended, and the true religion is embraced, that the blessings of liberty should be extended likewise, and that it should diffuse its influences first to fertilize the mind, and then the effects of its benignity would extend, and a...
preview | full record— Cugoano, Quobna Ottobah (c. 1757-1791)
Date: April 5, 1781, 1788
"Cultivated ground has few weeds; a mind occupied by lawful business, has little room for useless regret."
preview | full record— Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)
Date: 1789
"You stupify them with stripes, and think it necessary to keep them in a state of ignorance; and yet you assert that they are incapable of learning; that their minds are such a barren soil or moor, that culture would be lost on them; and that they come from a climate, where nature, though prodiga...
preview | full record— Equiano, Olaudah [Gustavus Vasa] (c. 1745-1797)
Date: 1790
"When they are habitually convinced that no evil can be acceptable, either in the act or the permission, to him whose essence is good, they will be better able to extirpate out of the minds of all magistrates, civil, ecclesiastical, or military, any thing that bears the least resemblance to a pro...
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)
Date: 1790
"With these ideas rooted in their minds, the commons of Great Britain, in the national emergencies, will never seek their resource from the confiscation of the estates of the church and poor."
preview | full record— Burke, Edmund (1729-1797)