2. "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State." - James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 25, 1788 - considered the 'father of the Constitution'
3. "With respect to the words 'general welfare,' I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison
4. Thomas Jefferson's prediction: "The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield."
5. "There is in the nature of government an impatience of control that disposes those invested with power to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. This has its origin in the love of power. Representatives of the people are not superior to the people themselves." - Alexander Hamilton - Federalist Paper No.15, 1787.
6. "Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison - 1788
7. "I place economy among the first and most important of republic virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared." -Thomas Jefferson to William Plumer, 1816
8. "The price of Liberty is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
9. "Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrants." - James Madison
10. "Judge the future by the past." - Patrick Henry - 1736-1799
11. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations - entangling alliances with none." - Thomas Jefferson, 1801 inaugural address.
12. "America... well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extraction, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force... She might become dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit." - John Quincy Adams; Address, 4 July 1821
13. "Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all... The Nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest ... Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances, with any portion of the foreign world." - George Washington, Farewell Address, 17 Sept. 1796.
14. "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be." - Thomas Jefferson
15. "No legislative act contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representative of the people is superior to the people." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Paper No. 78.
16. "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." - John Quincy Adams, 6th President of USA.
17. "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage." Alexander Tyler (When the thirteen colonies were still a part of England, Scottish Historian/Professor Alexander Tyler wrote about the fall of the Athenian republic over two thousand years previous to that time. NOTE > some have questioned the source of this quote, and that the last name was 'Tytler', not Tyler)
18. "On every question of construction (of The Constitution), let us carry ourselves back to the time when The Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed." - Thomas Jefferson
19. "A small leak can sink a great ship." - Benjamin Franklin
20. "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" - Edmund Burke 1729-1797
21. "Aided by a little sophistry on the words 'general welfare', [they claim] a right to do not only the acts to effect that which are specifically enumerated and permitted, but whatsoever they shall think or pretend will be for the general welfare." --- Thomas Jefferson 1825 to W. Giles.
22. "For what shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul." - Mark 8:36
23. "No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence." - George Washington to James Madison 1789.
24. "I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
"Thomas Jefferson - letter to the Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin (1802).
25. "...There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. ... Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing." - Daniel Webster, June 1, 1837
26. "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." - Thomas Jefferson
27. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” --Thomas Jefferson
28. "It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder." Frederic Bastiat's famous economics book The Law, published in 1850
29. "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." - Mohandas K. Ghandi
30. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, all the people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time." - Abraham Lincoln ??
31. "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." - Plato 429-347 B.C.
32. "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." - William Pitt (1759-1806)
33. "Trust but verify" - Ronald Reagan, U.S. President, 1980-88
34. "The only proper purpose of government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man's self defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of government are: to protect you from criminals; the military, to protect you from foreign invaders; and, the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law." - 'Atlas Shrugged', by renowned philosopher Ayn Rand, 1957.
35. "The decline of great powers is caused by simple economic over extension." - Paul Kennedy 'The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers - economic change and military conflicts 1500-2000'
36. "Government is best that governs least." - Henry Thoreau, in 'Civil Disobedience' -'people should not permit governments to overrule'
37. "Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens against crimes against themselves or their property. When government -- in pursuit of good intentions -- tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the costs come in inefficiency, lack of innovation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend). As I have said repeatedly, I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit." - Milton Friedman, Noble laureate
38. "The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. Both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists." - Ernest Hemingway - 1899-1961 - Nobel laureate Literature 1954
39. “By adopting programs to redistribute substantial amounts of income, a nation guarantees that its government will become more powerful and invasive in other ways.” - Robert Higgs
40. "It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Dr. Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945.
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