Benjamin Rush

...This large and expensive stock of drugs will be unnecessary. By...doses of...medicines...multiplying...combining them properly, 20 to 30 articles, aided by the common resources of the lancet, a garden, a kitchen, fresh air, cool water, exercise, will be sufficient to cure all the diseases that are at present under the power of medicine.

The Bible, when not read in schools, is seldom read in any subsequent period of life...The Bible...should be read in our schools in preference to all other books because it contains the greatest portion of that kind of knowledge which is calculated to produce private and public happiness.

The gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation in life. Happy they who are enabled to obey them in all situations!

Dissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more — we have increased their mortality.

Temperate, sincere, and intelligent inquiry and discussion are only to be dreaded by the advocates of error. The truth need not fear them.

The art of healing is like an unroofed temple, uncovered at the top and cracked at the foundation.

[W]here there is no law, there is no liberty; and nothing deserves the name of law but that which is certain and universal in its operation upon all the members of the community.

Mirth, and even cheerfulness, when employed as remedies in low spirits, are like hot water to a frozen limb.

A Christian cannot fail of being a republican.

While the business of education in Europe consists in lectures upon the ruins of Palmyra and the antiquities of Herculaneum , or in disputes about Hebrew points, Greek particles, or the accent and quantity of the Roman language, the youth of America will be employed in acquiring those branches of knowledge which increase the conveniences of life.

I anticipate the Day when to command Respect in the remotest Regions it will be sufficient to say I am an American.

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

Let the children...be carefully instructed in the principles and obligations of the Christian religion. This is the most essential part of education.

In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.

Controversy is only dreaded by the advocates of error.

The business of education has lay[ed] the foundations for nurseries of wise and good men, to adapt our modes of teaching to the peculiar form of our government . . . . He must be taught to love his fellow creatures in every part of the world, but he must cherish with a more intense and peculiar affection the citizens of Pennsylvania and of the United States.

Such is my veneration for every religion that reveals the attributes of the Deity, or a future state of rewards and punishments, that I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth than see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles.

Without the restraints of religion and social worship, men become savages much sooner than savages become civilized by means of religion and civil government.

In Macbeth a lady is restrained from the murder of a king by his resemblance of her father as he slept. Should not all men be restrained from acts of violence and even of unkindness against their fellow men by observing in them something which resembles the Savior of the World? If nothing else certainly, a human figure?

By withholding the knowledge of [the Scriptures] from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds.

There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.