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 WebsterRead
To exterminate our popular vices is a work of far more importance to the character and happiness of our citizens than any other improvements in our system of education.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Eliminating societal vices is more crucial for the well-being of citizens than improving education alone.
Noah Webster emphasizes that addressing and eliminating popular vices within society is paramount for enhancing the character and happiness of individuals, suggesting that education improvements, while important, are secondary to the moral and ethical development that comes from correcting societal flaws.
Themes
VicesEducationHappinessCharacterSociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on community improvement, one might use this quote to highlight the importance of moral responsibility.
More from Noah Webster
All quotes →It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country.
Noah WebsterRead
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 WebsterRead
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 WebsterRead
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 WebsterRead
Nothing has a greater tendency to lessen the reverence which mankind ought to have for the Supreme Being, than a careless repetition of his name upon every trifling occasion . . . . To prevent this profanation, such passages are selected from scripture, as contain some important precepts of morality and religion, in which that sacred name is seldom mentioned. Let sacred things be appropriated to sacred purposes.
Noah WebsterRead
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