What They Said

"This Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them."

James Madison

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation." 

Alexander Hamilton

"An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others."

Thomas Jefferson

“All government is an ugly necessity.”

G.K Chesterton

“Once abolish the God, and the government becomes the God"

G.K. Chesterton

“Men are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern.”

G.K. Chesterton

"A military government may make a nation great, but it cannot make them free."

Fisher Ames

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural."

Thomas Jefferson

“A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a dangerous master.”

George Washington

“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.”

Thomas Jefferson

"A government, thus settled on republican principles, required laws; without which it must have degenerated immediately into aristocracy, or absolute monarchy.  But God did not leave a people, wholly unskilled in legislation, to make laws for themselves: he took this important matter wholly into his own hands, and beside the moral laws of the two tables, which directed their conduct as individuals, gave them by Moses a complete code of judicial laws.  They were not numerous indeed, but concise and plain, and easily applicable to almost every controversy which might arise between man and man, and every criminal case which might require the judgment of the court."

Samuel Langdon

(January 12, 1723 – November 29, 1797)