Our Founders Understood the Danger of a Nation That Has Forgotten its Roots & The Source of Its Blessings

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

“Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. –George Washington, “Farewell Speech” (1796)

“When we review the calamities which afflict so many other nations, the present condition of the United States affords much matter of consolation and satisfaction. Our exemption hitherto from foreign war, an increasing prospect of the continuance of that exemption, the great degree of internal tranquillity we have enjoyed, the recent confirmation of that tranquillity by the suppression of an insurrection which so wantonly threatened it, the happy course of our public affairs in general, the unexampled prosperity of all classes of our citizens, are circumstances which peculiarly mark our situation with indications of the Divine beneficence toward us. In such a state of things it is in an especial manner our duty as a people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and to implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience.” –George Washington, “A Proclamation” (Jan 1, 1795)

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/adamsme1.asp [partial source]

“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.”- John Adams, “Address to the Military” (Oct.11, 1798)

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/jefferson/ch18.html

“And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?  That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever” –Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:227

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man”. – Thomas Jefferson (Jefferson Memorial, DC)