Political Quotes

“I greatly appreciate my colleague from Colorado for leading this Special Order on the Bible, its importance to each of us, and its influence on our constitutional Republic. Our Founding Fathers understood that Biblical values were the basis for our Republic and that this country would be slowly destroyed if the people's knowledge and adherence to those values were ever lost. In reference to this danger, John Adams wrote: ``Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes, and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these would soon mold itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit, and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and abominable cruelty of one or a very few.'' In a simpler language, that means ``tyranny.'' When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States early in the 19th century, he wrote in ``Democracy in America'' that our Nation's ``religious atmosphere was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States.'' He believed that adherence to the virtuous standards was indispensable for the preservation of liberty. Mr. Speaker, he was correct in this assessment. This brings me to one of my own favorite passages in the Bible: the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy, in 2 Timothy 3:16 through 2 Timothy 4:5.…”