President Theodore Roosevelt on the Importance of the Bible

Our whole U.S. history is infused with the Judeo-Christian religion. Many of our earliest settlers came here to worship in the way they chose, and many of our Founder Fathers had formal Christian education (even holding seminary degrees). But it continues into our more recent years, too. Here is a quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

As all of you know, there are certain truths which are so very true that we call them truisms, and yet I think we often half forget them in practice. Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes what a very large number of people tend to forget, that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally - I do not mean figuratively, I mean literally - impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose almost all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standard toward which we, with more or less of resolution, strive to raise ourselves. Almost every man who has by his lifework added to the sum of human achievement of which the race is proud, of which our people are proud - almost every such man has based his lifework largely upon the teachings of the Bible. Sometimes it has been done unconsciously, more often consciously; and among the very greatest men a disproportionately large number have been diligent and close students of the Bible at first hand.

As found in the periodical "Public opinion, Volume 32" (covering January 1902-June 1902)
Google Books extract