Benjamin Rush Quotations

The only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government is the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by means of the Bible.

Christianity is the only true and perfect religion; and... in proportion as mankind adopt its principles and obey its precepts, they will be wise and happy.

Freedom can exist only in the society of knowledge. Without learning, men are incapable of knowing their rights.

By withholding the knowledge of [the Scriptures] from children, we deprive ourselves of the best means of awakening moral sensibility in their minds.

Terror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness.

Were I disposed to consider the comparative merit of each of them [facts or theories in medical practice], I should derive most of the evils of medicine from supposed facts, and ascribe all the remedies which have been uniformly and extensively useful, to such theories as are true. Facts are combined and rendered useful only by means of theories, and the more disposed men are to reason, the more minute and extensive they become in their observations

In Macbeth a lady is restrained from the murder of a king by his resemblance of her father as he slept. Should not all men be restrained from acts of violence and even of unkindness against their fellow men by observing in them something which resembles the Savior of the World? If nothing else certainly, a human figure?

Mania's premonitory signs are unusual acts of extravagance, manifested by the purchase of houses, and certain expensive and unnecessary articles of furniture.

Dreams are nothing but incoherent ideas, occasioned by partial or imperfect sleep.

In such a performance you may lay the foundation of national happiness only in religion, not by leaving it doubtful "whether morals can exist without it," but by asserting that without religion morals are the effects of causes as purely physical as pleasant breezes and fruitful seasons.