Where Does It End?

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves”.

Click to expand...

“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”

Click to expand...

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground."

Click to expand...

"As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you."

Click to expand...

"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

Click to expand...

"If a member of the Executive or Legislature does wrong, the day is never far distant when the people will remove him. They will see then and amend the error in our Constitution which makes any branch independent of the nation."

Click to expand...

"You seem to consider the judges the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges … and their power [are] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and are not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves … . When the legislative or executive functionaries act unconstitutionally, they are responsible to the people in their elective capacity. The exemption of the judges from that is quite dangerous enough. I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society, but the people themselves."

Click to expand...

"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."

Click to expand...

"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working underground to undermine our Constitution from a co-ordinate of a general and special government to a general supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet. … I will say, that “against this every man should raise his voice,” and, more, should uplift his arm."

Click to expand...

"The internal effects of a mutable policy are [...] calamitous. It poisons the blessings of liberty itself. It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow."

Click to expand...

"All power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people. That government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people; which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty and the right of acquiring property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform or change their government whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purpose of its institution."

Click to expand...

"Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government."

Click to expand...

"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people... They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

Click to expand...

"if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be. the functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty & property of their constituents. there is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe."

Click to expand...

"The advertisement is the most truthful part of a newspaper."

Click to expand...

"A faction, is a number of citizens united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.*

Click to expand...

"To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

Click to expand...

"Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people."

Click to expand...

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Click to expand...

"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct."

Click to expand...

"If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?"

Click to expand...

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."

Click to expand...

"The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted."

Click to expand...

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."

Click to expand...

"Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty."

Click to expand...

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

Click to expand...

"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Click to expand...

"I beg you be persuaded that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."

Click to expand...

"Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism."

Click to expand...

"The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon."

Click to expand...

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Click to expand...

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

Click to expand...

"The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home."

Click to expand...

"Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship."

Click to expand...

"I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion about the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it."

Click to expand...

"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."

Click to expand...

"Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."

Click to expand...

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."

Click to expand...

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with
arms."

Click to expand...

"A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country."

Click to expand...

"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood."

Click to expand...

"A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people."

Click to expand...