John Adams on Morality and Religion

"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."

-- John Adams (Address to the Military, 11 October 1798)

Reference: America's God and Country (10-11)