"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty
to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics
and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture,
navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children
aright to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,
tapestry, and porcelain."
John Adams, (1735-1826)
US diplomat, patriot, and Federalist politician, 2nd president of US
1797-1801
"Duty is ours; results
are God's."
John Quincy Adams (1830s)
"The
eternal difference between right and wrong does not fluctuate. It
is immutable. And if the moral order does not change, then it imposes
on us obligations toward God and man. Duty, then, requires the
willingness to accept responsibility and to sacrifice one's desires to
a higher law."
Patrick Henry
"With
nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will
ever be found inseparable from our moral duties."
Thomas Jefferson
"The
rescue of drowning men is ... a duty worth dying for, but not
worth living for. It seems to me that all political duties (among which
I include military duties) are of this kind. A man may have to die for
our country: but no man must, in any exclusive sense, live for his
country. He who surrenders himself without reservation to the temporal
claims of a nation, or a party, or a class is rendering to Caesar that
which, of all things, most emphatically belongs to God: himself."
C.S. Lewis
"We
all
know our duty better than we discharge it."
John
Randolph
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