John Quincy Adams , our 6th President, who challenged us never to forget the the caliber of men it took to create this nation and the caliber of men to keep this nation’s liberties. One of his Discourses can be found in The Jubilee of the Constitution
The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is…the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It prolongs life itself and enlarges the sphere of existence. .
America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.