“This school should be kept by the most reputable and well informed man in the district. Here children should be taught the usual branches of learning; submission to superiors and to laws; the moral or social duties; the history and transactions of their own country; the principles of liberty and government. Here the rough manners of the wilderness should be softened, and the principles of virtue and good behavior inculcated. The virtues of men are of the more consequence to society than their abilities; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

Such a general system of education is neither impracticable nor difficult; and excepting the formation of a federal government that shall be efficient and permanent, it demands the first attention of American patriots. Until such a system shall be adopted and pursued; until the Statesman and Divine shall unite their efforts in forming the human mind, rather than in loping its excrescence, after it has been neglected; until Legislators discover that the only way to make good citizens and subjects, is to nourish them from infancy; and until parents shall be convinced that the worst of men are not the proper teachers to make the best; mankind cannot know to what a degree of perfection society and government may be carried. America affords the fairest opportunities for making the experiment, and opens the most encouraging prospect or success.”

Noah Webster (A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, 1790)

“In some countries, the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all: In ours, it is as common as a newspaper, and in schools, is read with nearly the same degree of respect. Both these practices appear to be extremes. My wish is not to see the Bible excluded from schools, but to see it used as a system of religion and morality.”

Noah Webster (A Collection of Essays and Fugitiv Writings, 1790)

“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all of our civil constitutions and laws… All of the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from them despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

Noah Webster (Founding Father/”Father of American Scholarship and Education”)

“The brief exposition of the Constitution of the United States will unfold to young persons the principles of republican government; and… our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible.”

Noah Webster (Founding Father/Founder of Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

“Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited… what a utopia – what a paradise would this region be.”

John Adams (Founding Father/Second President of the United States)

“The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the Word of God and teaches us to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.”

John Jay (Founding Father/First Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court)

“Were you to ask me for one book affording the most rational and pleasing entertainment to the enquiring mind, I would still say the Bible. And should you ask again about the best philosophy, or the most interesting history, I would still urge you to look into your Bible. I would make it, in short, the alpha and omega of knowledge.”

Elias Boudinot (Founding Father/President of Congress 1782-1783)

“Were you to ask me to recommend the most valuable book in the world, I should fix on the Bible as the most instructive – both to the wise and the ignorant.”

Elias Boudinot (Founding Father/President of Congress 1782-1783)

“For nearly half a century, I have anxiously and critically studied the Bible and I still scarcely ever take it up that I do not find something new.”

Elias Boudinot (Founding Father/President of Congress 1782-1783)

“Let the religious element in man’s nature be neglected and it becomes the creature of selfish passion. The cultivation of religious sediment incites general benevolence.”

Daniel Webster (Founding Father/ “Defender of the Constitution”)