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

“From John Adams to Horatio Gates, 23 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0023.

Paine, Thomas. "Rights of Man Part the second." Rights of Man, Common Sense, and Other Political Writings, edited by Mark Philp. Oxford University Press, 2009.

Phocylides. Quoted in Politics, written by Aristotle, translated by R. F. Stalley and Sir Ernest Barker. Oxford University Press, 2009, bk. 4.