Top 50 Noah Webster Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America’s basic text book in all fields. God’s Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.”

— Noah Webster

2. “The education of youth, an employment of more consequence than making laws and preaching the gospel, because it lays the foundation on which both law and gospel rest for success.”

— Noah Webster

3. “A national language is a band of national union.”

— Noah Webster

4. “Almost all the civil liberty now enjoyed in the world owes its origin to the principles of the christian religion.”

— Noah Webster

5. “The heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”

— Noah Webster

6. “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

7. “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

8. “The Moral Law is summarily contained in the Decalogue or Ten Commandments; written by the finger of God on two tablets of stone, and delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai.”

— Noah Webster

9. “The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”

— Noah Webster

10. “All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”

— Noah Webster

11. “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

12. “The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields.”

— Noah Webster

13. “Language, as well as the faculty of speech, was the immediate gift of God.”

— Noah Webster

14. “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

15. “The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes.”

— Noah Webster

16. “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities, and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head.”

— Noah Webster

17. “The Bible must be considered as the great source of all the truth by which men are to be guided in government as well as in all social transactions.”

— Noah Webster

18. “In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed.”

— Noah Webster

19. “An immense effect may be produced by small powers wisely and steadily directed.”

— Noah Webster

20. “Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, while they retain in their own hands, a power sufficient to any other power in the state.”

— Noah Webster

21. “Let the people have property and they will have power – a power that will forever be exerted to prevent the restriction of the press, the abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege.”

— Noah Webster

22. “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

23. “In the formation of our constitution the wisdom of all ages is collected-the legislators of antiquity are consulted, as well as the opinions and interests of the millions who are concerned. It short, it is an empire of reason.”

— Noah Webster

24. “When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country.”

— Noah Webster

25. “Unaffected modesty is the sweetest charm of female excellence, the richest gem in the diadem of her honor.”

— Noah Webster

26. “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.”

— Noah Webster

27. “It is the sincere desire of the writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the bible, particularly the New Testament or the Christian religion.”

— Noah Webster

28. “Treason is the highest crime of a civil nature of which a man can be guilty.”

— Noah Webster

29. “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

30. “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

31. “Every child in America should be acquainted with his own country. He should read books that furnish him with ideas that will be useful to him in life and practice. As soon as he opens his lips, he should rehearse the history of his own country.”

— Noah Webster

32. “The reasonableness of the command to obey parents is clear to children, even when quite young.”

— Noah Webster

33. “Power is always right, weakness always wrong. Power is always insolent and despotic.”

— Noah Webster

34. “The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Writ, even Magna Carta itself, although justly deemed the paladia of freedom, are all inferior considerations, when compared with the general distribution of real property among every class of people.”

— Noah Webster

35. “There are two powers only which are sufficient to control men, and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration; these are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of the bayonet.”

— Noah Webster

36. “It is admitted that all men have an equal right to the enjoyment of their life, property and personal security; and it is the duty as it is the object, of government to protect every man in this enjoyment.”

— Noah Webster

37. “The duties of men are summarily comprised in the Ten Commandments, consisting of two tables; one comprehending the duties which we owe immediately to God-the other, the duties we owe to our fellow men.”

— Noah Webster

38. “To suppose that man without language taught himself to speak, seems to me as absurd as it would be to suppose that without legs he could teach himself to walk. Language, therefore, must have been the immediate gift of God.”

— Noah Webster

39. “Compassion is a mixed passion, composed of love and sorrow.”

— Noah Webster

40. “Discipline our youth in early life in sound maxims of moral, political, and religious duties.”

— Noah Webster

41. “Ability is active power, or power to perform.”

— Noah Webster

42. “The minds of youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rime or to Great Britain; Boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero, or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament.”

— Noah Webster

43. “Whenever a man is known to seek promotion by intrigue, by temporizing, or by resorting to the haunts of vulgarity and vice for support, it may be inferred, with moral certainty, that he is not a man of real respectability, nor is he entitled to public confidence.”

— Noah Webster

44. “Where will you find any code of laws among civilized men in which the commands and prohibitions are not founded on Christian principles? I need not specify the prohibition of murder, robbery, theft, trespass.”

— Noah Webster

45. “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

46. “The ecclesiastical establishments of Europe which serve to support tyrannical governments are not the Christian religion but abuses and corruptions of it.”

— Noah Webster

47. “But when thou findest sensibility of heart, joined with softness of manners, an accomplished mind, and religion, united with sweetness of temper, modest deportment, and a love of domestic life; such is the woman who will divide the sorrows and double the joys of thy life. Take her to thyself; she is worthy to be thy nearest friend, thy companion, the wife of thy bosom.”

— Noah Webster

48. “Facts which were new to me were daily presenting themselves to my mind.”

— Noah Webster

49. “Let us reject the spirit of making proselytes to particular creeds by any other means than persuasion.”

— Noah Webster

50. “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