Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.

Politics moves upward into ethics, and ethics ascends to theology.

If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.

Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.

The libertarian thinks that this world is chiefly a stage for the swaggering ego; the conservative finds himself instead a pilgrim in a realm of mystery and wonder, where duty, discipline, and sacrifice are required-and where the reward is that love which passeth all understanding.

Life is for action, and if we desire to know anything, we must make up our minds to be ignorant about much.

Nothing is more conservative than conservation