Public Virtue: Some Nice Quotes

When the United States was founded, it was not power or wealth or religious diversity that the Founding Fathers felt differentiated Americans from others, allowing them to found a republic, but public virtue.

A recent New York Review of Books essay by historian Edmund S. Morgan argued this convincingly. In the early nineteenth century, Americans "continued to regard public virtue as the hallmark of a republic, and they retained a doubt that other peoples were as well endowed with it as themselves."

But as Morgan points out, the Founding Fathers considered public virtue "a fragile thing, imperiled by the avarice and ambition intrinsic to human nature."

The struggle to preserve our republic, a nation where the people truly rule and rulers act only in the public interest, is the struggle for fair, ethical behavior by those who rule our country, at every level. Here are some nice quotes to bring out the next time someone says that ethics is not really that important an issue.

"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." --Benjamin Franklin

"Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.' --John Adams

"Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people. The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.' --George Washington

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.' --James Madison

Please add some of your favorite quotes in comments below.