71+ Noah Webster Quotes On Education, Bible And Language

Noah Webster was an American lexicographer, textbook pioneer, English-language spelling reformer, and political writer. He wrote the first American dictionary and established the first spelling rules for the American English language. He also wrote the first American spelling book, and published many books to teach people how to read and write. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Noah Webster on education, bible, language.

Top 10 Noah Webster Quotes

1. Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America's basic text book in all fields. God's Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.
2. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
3. In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate-look to his character.
4. No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.
5. A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
6. Any system of education...which limits instruction to the arts and sciences and rejects the aids of religion in forming the characters of citizens, is essentially defective.
7. When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.
8. The education of youth, an employment of more consequence than making laws and preaching the gospel, because it lays the foundation on which both law and gospel rest for success.
9. Discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties.
10. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.

Noah Webster Short Quotes

• Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.
• Compassion is a mixed passion, composed of love and sorrow.
• Ability is active power, or power to perform.
• An immense effect may be produced by small powers wisely and steadily directed.
• Treason is the highest crime of a civil nature of which a man can be guilty.
• The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.

Noah Webster Quotes About Education

The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rime or to Great Britain; Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament. — Noah Webster

To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education. — Noah Webster

Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country. — Noah Webster

Noah Webster Quotes About Bible

The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer. — Noah Webster

It is the sincere desire of the writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion. — Noah Webster

The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men. — Noah Webster

In some countries the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all. In ours, it is as common as a newspaper and in schools is read with nearly the same degree of respect. — Noah Webster

The Bible was America's basic textbook in all fields. — Noah Webster

The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions. — Noah Webster

Noah Webster Quotes About Language

A national language is a band of national union. — Noah Webster

To suppose that man without language taught himself to speak, seems to me as absurd as it would be to suppose that without legs he could teach himself to walk. Language, therefore, must have been the immediate gift of God. — Noah Webster

Language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God. — Noah Webster

There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force; and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors. — Noah Webster

Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. — Noah Webster

Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language. — Noah Webster

Noah Webster Quotes About Religion

[T]he Christian religion, in its purity, is the basis, or rather the source of all genuine freedom in government. . . . and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence. — Noah Webster

In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed. — Noah Webster

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. — Noah Webster

There are two powers only which are sufficient to control men, and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet. — Noah Webster

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it. — Noah Webster

Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the christian religion. — Noah Webster

Noah Webster Famous Quotes And Sayings

If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . . If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws. — Noah Webster

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. — Noah Webster

Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state. — Noah Webster

A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. — Noah Webster

But the reasonableness of this command to obey parents, is clear, and easily understood by children, even when quite young. — Noah Webster

Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence. — Noah Webster

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty. — Noah Webster

In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected-the legislators of antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason. — Noah Webster

The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws . . . The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his Apostles . . . This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government. — Noah Webster

Knowledge, learning, talents are not necessarily connected with sound moral and political principles.... And eminent abilities, accompanied with depravity of heart, render the possessor tenfold more dangerous in a community. — Noah Webster

As a general rule, it may be affirmed that the man who never intrigues for office may be most safely entrusted with office...Such a man cannot desire promotion unless he received it from the respectable part of the community, for he considers no other promotion to be honorable. — Noah Webster

The Moral Law is summarily contained in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments; written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai. — Noah Webster

Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor. — Noah Webster

The laws are the sole guardians of right, and when the magistrate dares not act, every person is insecure. — Noah Webster

Where will you find any code of laws among civilized men in which the commands and prohibitions are not founded on Christian principles? I need not specify the prohibition of murder, robbery, theft, trespass. — Noah Webster

Why not include a provision that everybody shall, in good weather, hunt on his own land and catch fish in rivers that are public property and that Congress shall never restrain any inhabitant of America from eating and drinking, at seasonable times, or prevent his lying on his left side, in a long winter's night, or even on his back, when he is fatigued by lying on his right. — Noah Webster

The freedom of the press is a valuable privilege, but the abuse of it in this country is a frightful evil. The licentiousness of the press is a deep stain upon the character of the country; and in addition to the evil of calumniating good men and giving a wrong direction to public measures, it corrupts the people by rendering them insensible to the value of truth and of reputation. — Noah Webster

The man who has half a million of dollars in property... has a much higher interest in the government, than the man who has little or no property. — Noah Webster

The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe, which serve to support tyrannical governments, are not the Christian religion, but abuses and corruptions of it. The religion of Christ and his apostles, in it primitive simplicity and purity, unencumbered with the trappings of power and the pomp of ceremonies, is the surest basis of a republican government. — Noah Webster

Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes. — Noah Webster

The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes. — Noah Webster

It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country. — Noah Webster

Relief of distress or compassion shown to victims of misfortune. A blessing that is an act of Divine compassion. — Noah Webster

Dancing is an excellent amusement for young people, especially for those of sedentary occupations. Its excellence consists in exciting a cheerfulness of the mind, highly essential to health; in bracing the muscles of the body, and in producing copious perspiration.....The body must perspire, or must be out of order. — Noah Webster

Let the people have property and they will have power - a power that will forever be exerted to prevent the restriction of the press, the abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege. — Noah Webster

The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head. — Noah Webster

Let us reject the spirit of making proselytes to particular creeds by any other means than persuasion. — Noah Webster

The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Writ, even Magna Carta itself, although justly deemed the paladia of freedom, are all inferior considerations, when compared with the general distribution of real property among every class of people. — Noah Webster

It is admitted that all men have an equal right to the enjoyment of their life, property and personal security; and it is the duty as it is the object, of government to protect every man in this enjoyment. — Noah Webster

The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God-the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men. — Noah Webster

...if the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded. — Noah Webster

It is alleged by men of loose principles , or defective views of the subject, that religion and morality are not necessary or important qualifications for political station. When a citizen gives his vote to a man of immorality , he abuses his civic responsibilty. He sacrifices not only his own interest but that of his neighbor, and he betrays the interest of his country. — Noah Webster

Might his last glance behold the glorious ensign of the Republic still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in all their original lustre. — Noah Webster

The education of youth should be watched with the most scrupulous attention. [I]t is much easier to introduce and establish an effectual system ... than to correct by penal statutes the ill effects of a bad system. ... The education of youth ... lays the foundations on which both law and gospel rest for success. — Noah Webster

Life Lessons by Noah Webster

1. Noah Webster taught the importance of hard work and perseverance, having worked for years to create his dictionary despite numerous setbacks.
2. He also taught the value of education and the importance of having a good command of the English language.
3. Finally, he demonstrated the power of having a vision and the ability to bring it to fruition, despite the odds.