Benjamin Franklin Quotes

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or galantry 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.

Freedom without virtue isn't freedom - it will eventually destroy a society.

Men cannot be made good by the state, but they can easily be made bad. Morality depends on liberty.

Liberty is equally desirable to the good and to the bad, to the brave and to the dastardly.

There are multitudes of persons whose idea of liberty is the right to do what they please, instead of the right of doing that which is lawful and best.

[M]en will be free no longer then while they remain virtuous.

Every virtuous man is free.

Corrupt citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.

Our founding fathers recognized that morality was the foundation of a successful republic.

The story of man is the history, first, of the acceptance and imposition of restraints necessary to permit communal life; and second, of the emancipation of the individual within that system of necessary restraints.

We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government--a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.

Without Virtue there can be no liberty

Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.

As soon as the economic freedom which the market economy grants to its members is removed, all political liberties and bills of rights become humbug.

The diminution of public virtue is usually attended with that of public happiness, and the public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.

Let us have justice, and then we shall have enough liberty!

If you believe that man is inherently flawed-what religious people call 'original sin'-it follows that man, if left to his own devices, will tend towards ego-driven disharmony. Traditionalist conservatives know that absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state, there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary to their own best interests, or those of the community.

It is no accident that wherever the State ha taken economic decision away from the citizen, it has deprived him of his other liberties as well.

Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.

You're thinking I'm one of those wise-ass California vegetarians who is going to tell you that eating a few strips of bacon is bad for your health. I'm not. I say its a free country and you should be able to kill yourself at any rate you choose, as long as your cold dead body is not blocking my driveway.

License they mean when they cry Liberty; For who loves that, must first be wise and good.

When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap.

Liberty begets license.