John Adams' call for virtue in public service

"If elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country, and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people, deeply engraved on my mind in early life, and not obscured, but exulted, by experience and age; and with humble reverence, I feel it my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of the people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me, in any degree, to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenous endeaveor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect." John Adams, Inaugural Address

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