Charles Francis Adams II Quotes

Education is not just another consumer item. It is the bedrock of our democracy.

The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused throughout a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government.

O people of America. The destinies of your country are in your own hands. They are committed to your own keeping. It is for you to say which ye will have, liberty or slavery, knowledge or ignorance, happiness or misery.

America is a melting pot, and education has been a mainspring for our democracy and freedom, a means of providing gifts of knowledge and opportunity to all citizens, no matter how humble their background, so they could climb higher, help build the American dream, and leave a better life for those who follow.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy!

Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Without education, you can’t have democracy.

Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.

Democracy destroys itself because it abuses its right to freedom and equality. Because it teaches its citizens to consider audacity as a right, lawlessness as a freedom, abrasive speech as equality, and anarchy as progress.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither justice nor freedom can be permanently maintained.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

We cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

Give education and knowledge to the common people.

I am determined to be a first class citizen.

To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.