Mercy Otis Warren Quotes

I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass.

No one seems to care for anything but about money today. Nothing is held of account except the bank accounts. Quality, education, civic distinction, public virtue seem each year to be valued less and less.

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

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

The notion that public service requires men and women of good character now seems quaint.

I refuse to bring my son up in a world corrupt as it is now.

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest and ourselves united.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

I have learned, by some experience, that virtue and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found in all parties, and that they differ less in their motives than in the policies they pursue.

When the religion is subjected to restriction, evil, crime, corruption and pornography become spread everywhere

There's a lot to be done; I just see a total moral decay in our society.

Our country's got a sin problem, and I believe if these politicians in Washington would recognize the moral failure of so many of their policies that maybe we could fix it.

There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country.

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.

Virtue in a republic is the love of one's country, that is the love of equality.

Vice is its own reward.

To this hour, the great science and duty of politics is lowered by the petty leaven of small and personal advantage.

Vice, like virtue, Grows in small steps, and no true innocence Can ever fall at once to deepest guilt.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.

We may form free constitutions, but our vices will destroy them; we may enact laws, but they will not protect us.

At a time when pimpery, lick-spittlery, and picking the public's pocket are the order of the day - indeed, officially proclaimed as virtue - the poet must play the madcap to keep his balance. And ours.

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.

When public virtue is gone, when the national spirit is fled the republic is lost in essence, though it may still exist in form