“Let our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in several orbits.”

- John Dickinson

“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.”

- George Washington

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

- Benjamin Franklin

"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."  

- John Adams

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government."

- Patrick Henry

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquence. It is force. And force, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."  

- George Washington

“A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.”

- James Madison

“A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

“An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”

- James Madison

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.”

- James Madison

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“Most bad government has grown out of too much government.”

- Thomas Jefferson

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

- Thomas Jefferson

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

- Thomas Jefferson