The Role of Education in Preserving Our Nation

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”

- Thomas Jefferson  

(John P. Foley, The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia, P. 605)

 “Let the Constitution be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling-books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in the courts of justice.  And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation."

–Abraham Lincoln  

(Complete Woks of Abraham Lincoln, ed. John G. Nicolay and  John Hay, vol. 1(New York; Francis D. Tandy Co., 1905), p.43)

“Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.”

-Benjamin Franklin  (

The Works of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, p. 87)

 “A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them, cannot be enslaved. It is in the regions of ignorance that tyranny reigns.

                                                     -Dr. Henry Stuber

“Every member of the State ought diligently to read and to study the Constitution of his country … by knowing their rights, they will soon perceive when they are violated and be the better prepared to defend and assert them.”

-John Jay 

(Charge to the Grand Jury of Ulster County 1777)

 “We therefore commend and encourage every person and every group who are sincerely seeking to study Constitutional principles and awaken a sleeping and apathetic people to the alarming conditions that are rapidly advancing about us.  We wish all of our citizens throughout the land were participating in some type of organized self-education in order that they could better appreciate what is happening and know what they can do about it.”

-David O. McKay  

(The Improvement Era, June 1966, p. 477)

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome direction, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

-Thomas Jefferson 

 (Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278.)

“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 once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.”

-Samuel Adams  

(The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed., Harry Alonzo Cushing (G. P. Putman's Sons, 1908), Vol. 4, p. 124.

“The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.”

-Abraham Lincoln 

(William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, Encyclopedia of Quotations, P. 392)

 “Next to being one in worshiping God, there is nothing which this Church should be more united than in upholding and defending the Constitution of the United States.”

-David O. McKay   

(The Instructor, Feb. 1956, p. 34)

Learn more at www.TheGloriousCauseOfAmerica.org