“Great change can only be effected by unity. But "Union without knowledge is useless; Knowledge without union is powerless." Then what is the right knowledge? Owen said it consisted in knowing that people came into the world without any intention of doing it; and often with limited capacities, and with disadvantages of person, and with instinctive tendencies which impel them against their will, and which disqualifications they did not give themselves…. Dislike dies in the heart of those who understand this, and the spirit of unity arises.”

Source: The Complete Essays

Letter to W.T. Barry http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch18s35.html (4 August 1822), in The Writings of James Madison (1910) edited by Gaillard Hunt, Vol. 9, p. 103; these words, using the older spelling "Governours", are inscribed to the left of the main entrance, Library of Congress James Madison Memorial Building.
1820s

Education Agreeable to a Republican Form of Government http://books.google.com/books?id=iquJqc4QPDwC&pg=PA97&dq=%22Freedom+can+exist+only+in+the+society+of+knowledge.+Without+learning,+men+are+incapable+of+knowing+their+rights+%22&hl=en&ei=0SBGTM3zIZCmnQfxsb38Aw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Freedom%20can%20exist%20only%20in%20the%20society%20of%20knowledge.%20Without%20learning%2C%20men%20are%20incapable%20of%20knowing%20their%20rights%20%22&f=false

Rules 2 Rule

Quote reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895). p. 365.
Quotes from secondary sources

1760s, A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1765)
Source: The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States
Context: Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees, of the people; and if the cause, the interest, and trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed, and to constitute other and better agents, attorneys and trustees.

“What is liberal education,” p. 5 [The phrase “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” is from Max Weber]
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)

Facts are Facts (1954)

Source: 1960s, The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), p. 49