Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“The mind as well as the body must be not only strong but well disciplined in order to act with promptness and vigor in new and untried situations. It is hard to turn men's minds from the old and deeply worn channels in which they have long been flowing.”

“No government can be strong and flourishing while the national character is weak and degraded. A government must flourish and decay with its subjects; and, when a prince makes a law or performs an action which has a tendency to injure the character or prosperity of the nation, he injures himself.”

“No nation can answer for the equity of proceedings in all its inferior courts. It suffices to provide a supreme judicature by which error and partiality may be corrected.”

“Whatever may be the merits of a religious system, its effects upon the mass of mankind must depend in an important degree upon its teachers. All instruction and all truth, except simple mathematical truth, is modified by the medium through which it is conveyed.”

“He who is unconscious of the ties which connect him with every individual of his species feels no obligation to make sacrifices for their welfare or happiness.”

“Religion may become a fashion as well as anything else; and, when it does become so, it has as little to do, in those who thus hold it, with the heart and the character as any other fashion.”

“There are many causes why a people politically ignorant cannot be roused to action. Perfect political ignorance must be accompanied by indifference to the general interests of society, and thus one of the most powerful motives which can act on the human mind is totally destroyed.”