Anything the government gives you is just another link in the chains that destroy your liberty.

Rights don't come from human documents. The very idea is only worthy of contempt. Human documents are nothing but pieces of paper, they are nothing but words--until by will, and conscience, and courage, and commitment, human beings turn them into reality.

It's like the neighborhood I would have grown up in, I think, if I had have grown up here.

The Declaration of Independence summarizes the civic principles of American life. It agrees with this biblical perspective when it affirms that we are all created equal and endowed by the Creator, God, with our unalienable rights.

I feel like we're between two great possibilities: we're either going to turn things around, and in this generation see the rising sun of a new moral dedication in America, or we're going to lose the struggle for that moral renewal, throw away the basic principles on which our life and civilization is based, and head toward a new century that will make the 20th century look like a dress rehearsal for evil.

We stand on no high moral plateau in our time. We are, in fact, plumbing depths of depravity unknown to our ancestors--and whatever may have been the evil in which they engaged, at least they were willing to acknowledge the principle by which their evil was condemned. We have even turned our back on the principle.

If we accept the logic of the Declaration, reverence for God is not just a matter of religious faith, it is the foundation of justice and citizenship in our republic.