John Adams on Morality & Christianity

"We are basing the hope of mankind in our ability to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

""We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."

"Twenty times, in the course of my late reading, have I been upon the point of breaking out, 'This would be the best of all possible Worlds, if there were no Religion in it,' !!! But in this exclamation I should have been as fanatical as Bryant or Cleverly [a minister and a schoolteacher, mentioned earlier in the letter]. Without Religion, this World would be Something not fit to be mentioned in polite company, I mean Hell." Written in a  letter to Thomas Jefferson, April 19, 1817