Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government.
Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?
The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.
A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained in arms, is the best most natural defense of a free country.
Nothing could be more irrational than to give the people power, and to withhold from them information without which power is abused.
Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.
Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country.
The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.
The nation which reposes on the pillow of political confidence, will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lethargy.
Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
They can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society.
Any reading not of a vicious species must be a good substitute for the amusements too apt to fill up the leisure of the labouring classes.
The rights of man as the foundation of just Government had been long understood but the superstructures projected had been sadly defective
It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
Are not the daily devotions conducted by these legal ecclesiastics already degenerating into a scanty attendance, and a tiresome formality?
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.
It is vain to say that enlightened statesmen will always be able to adjust their interests. Enlightened men will not always be at the helm.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the disease incident to republican government.
Security against foreign danger is one of the primitive objects of civil society. It is an avowed and essential object of the American Union.
Thus the right of nullification meant by Mr. Jefferson is the natural right, which all admit to be a remedy against insupportable oppression.
The personal right to acquire property, which is a natural right, gives to property, when acquired, a right to protection, as a social right.
The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.
A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens, the hemlock on one day, and statues on the next.
The safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.
Among the features peculiar to the political system of the United States, is the perfect equality of rights which it secures to every religious sect.
A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species.
What a perversion of the normal order of things! ... to make power the primary and central object of the social system, and Liberty but its satellite.
Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded.
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.
Nothing is so contagious as opinion, especially on questions which, being susceptible of very different glosses, beget in the mind a distrust of itself.
The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.
In suits at common law, trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature.
What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?
A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermingle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.
For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power?
The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose and from which no apprehensions are entertained.
The governments of Europe are afraid to trust the people with arms. If they did, the people would certainly shake off the yoke of tyranny, as America did.
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.
I own myself the friend to a very free system of commerce, and hold it as a truth, that commercial shackles are generally unjust, oppressive and impolitic.
The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account
A local spirit will infallibly prevail much more in the members of Congress than a national spirit will prevail in the legislatures of the particular States.
[Restraints on the press] in all ages, have debauched morals, depressed liberty, shackled religion, supported despotism, and deluged the scaffold with blood.
Conscience is the most sacred of all property; other property depending in part on positive law, the exercise of that, being a natural and unalienable right.
Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.
We have the self-evident right to regulate our trade according to our own will and our own interest . . . . This right can be denied to no independent nation.
A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression.
The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defense against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad.