Thoughts on our Constitution, by President John Adams

United States Bill of Rights Preamble to the Constitution

    We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
President John Adams

Metaxas, Eric. If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty (p. 61). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.