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Language is the expression of ideas, and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas they cannot retain an identity of language.

Noah Webster

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Noah Webster
Age: 84 †
Born: 1758
Born: October 16
Died: 1843
Died: May 28
Journalist
Lexicographer
Linguist
Politician
Writer
Noah Webster
Jr.
Cannot
Ideas
Country
Retain
People
Preserve
Preserves
Identity
Expression
Language

More quotes by Noah Webster

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When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God. The preservation of a republican government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty.
Noah Webster
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In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate-look to his character.
Noah Webster
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Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.
Noah Webster
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Knowledge, learning, talents are not necessarily connected with sound moral and political principles.... And eminent abilities, accompanied with depravity of heart, render the possessor tenfold more dangerous in a community.
Noah Webster
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Ability is active power, or power to perform.
Noah Webster
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No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.
Noah Webster
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A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
Noah Webster
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A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
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The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws . . . The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and his Apostles . . . This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.
Noah Webster
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Treason is the highest crime of a civil nature of which a man can be guilty.
Noah Webster
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Relief of distress or compassion shown to victims of misfortune. A blessing that is an act of Divine compassion.
Noah Webster
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Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.
Noah Webster
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Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.
Noah Webster
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In some countries the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all. In ours, it is as common as a newspaper and in schools is read with nearly the same degree of respect.
Noah Webster
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Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground
Noah Webster
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There iz no alternativ. Every possible reezon that could ever be offered for altering the spelling of wurds, stil exists in full force and if a gradual reform should not be made in our language, it wil proov that we are less under the influence of reezon than our ancestors.
Noah Webster
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The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society the best book for regulating the temporal [secular] concerns of men.
Noah Webster
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As a general rule, it may be affirmed that the man who never intrigues for office may be most safely entrusted with office...Such a man cannot desire promotion unless he received it from the respectable part of the community, for he considers no other promotion to be honorable.
Noah Webster
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Language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.
Noah Webster
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The principles of all genuine liberty, and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man therefore who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be assessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer.
Noah Webster