The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

A nation lives forever through its concepts, honor, and culture. It is for these reasons that the rulers of nations must judge and act not only on the basis of physical and material interests of the nation but on the basis of the nation's historical honor, of the nation's eternal interests. Thus: not bread at all costs, but honor at all costs.

The glory and grandeur of a nation lie only in the
development of its humanity. Its strength and inner vitality are measured by the degree of its liberty.

Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us.

Righteousness in the heart leads to order in the nation.

Certainly much depends upon the posture in which you converse of peace. What is the real foundation of the strength of a nation? Spirit, security, and conscious pride, that cannot stoop to dishonour. It comprehends a character that will neither offer nor receive an insult. Give me peace consistently with that principle, and I will not call it a peace "nominal or delusive;" and there is no man who will go farther than I will to obtain it. To any thing dishonourable I will never submit; nor will this country ever submit to it, I trust. There can be no man who has an English heart within his bosom who can wish it; or can wish that you may, by an untimely diminution of your strength, expose yourselves to the renewal, with aggravated insults, of those evils which we have already had too much reason to deplore.

Whether our values are maintained depends ultimately not on government, but on people. A nation can only be as great as the people want it to be. A nation can only be as free as its people insist that it be. A nation's laws are only as strong as the people's will to see them enforced. A nation's freedoms are only as secure as the people's determination to see them maintained. And a nation's values are only as lasting as the ability of each generation to pass them on to the next. We often have a tendency to turn away from the familiar because it is familiar, and turn to the new because it is new. To those intoxicated with the romance of violent revolution, the continuing revolution of democracy may sometimes seem quite unexciting. But no system has ever liberated the spirits of so many so fully. Nothing has ever "turned on" man's energies, his imagination, his unfettered creativity, the way the ideal of freedom has. We can be proud that we have that legacy and that we celebrate it today. Now there are some who see America's vast wealth and protest that this has made us materialistic. But we should not be apologetic about our abundance. We should not fall into the easy trap of confusing the production of things with the worship of things. We produce abundantly, but our values turn not on what we have but on what we believe. And what we believe very simply is this: We believe in liberty, in decency, and the process of freedom. On these beliefs we rest our pride as a nation. In these beliefs we rest our hopes for the future. And by our fidelity to the process of freedom we can assure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of freedom.

The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.

The upshot is that if you identify self-interest with piety, honesty, country, parents and friends, then they are all secure.

A safe family means a safe country.

A nation never falls but by suicide.

The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.