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Some favorite quotes:
"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites--in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;--in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;--in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere: and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds can not be free. Their passions forge their fetters."
-- Edmund Burke
"[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous."
-- George Washington (letter to Steptoe Washington, 5 December 1790)
"Reading, reflection and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts ... in which all religions agree." --Thomas Jefferson
Of all the dispositions and habits which least to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indespensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labor to subvert these great Pilliars of human happiness.
-- George Washington (Farewell Address, 19 September 1796)
"[W]hen People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders." --Samuel Adams
"The foundation of national morality must be laid in private families. ... How is it possible that Children can have any just Sense of the sacred Obligations of Morality or Religion if, from their earliest Infancy, they learn their Mothers live in habitual Infidelity to their fathers, and their fathers in as constant Infidelity to their Mothers?" --John Adams
Apropos of the Burke quote, the standard now seems to be just the opposite: appetite is king, and any person (or worse, institution) who would curtail it for such “outdated” concepts as morality and self-control must in fact be the enemy of liberty.
Oops, didn’t mean to quote the Libertarian Party platform.