Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.

Not by force of arms are civilizations held together, but by subtle threads of moral and intellectual principle.

Rousseau and his disciples were resolved to force men to be free; in most of the world, they triumphed; men are set free from family, church, town, class, guild; yet they wear, instead, the chains of the state, and they expire of ennui or stifling lone lines.

Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education.

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.

Despite much talk in this land about religious freedom, churches and their schools now confront grave difficulties.

Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery.