The Deterioration of Government

The deterioration of every government begins with
the decay of the principles on which it was founded
~Charles-Louis de Secondat

 

• “Liberty is to faction, what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.” ~James Madison, Federalist No. 10, 1787
  

• “Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” ~Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803
  

• “We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power.” ~Thomas Paine, Serious Address to the People of Philadelphia, 1778
  

• “No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defense of the state…. Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.” ~Josiah Quincy Jr., Thoughts on Standing Armies, 1774
  

• “No free government was ever founded or ever preserved its liberty, without uniting the characters of the citizen and soldier in those destined for the defence of the state…. Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders, citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property, as individuals, and their rights as freemen.” ~Josiah Quincy Jr., Thoughts on Standing Armies, 1774
  

• “I … place economy among the first and most important of republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. … We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.” ~Thomas Jefferson (1816)
  

• “A council to a magistrate, who is himself responsible for what he does, are generally nothing better than a clog upon his good intentions, are often the instruments and accomplices of his bad, and are almost always a cloak to his faults.” ~Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 70, 1788
  

• “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution, which at any time exists, ‘till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all.” ~George Washington (1796)
  

• “Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.” ~Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, 1816
  

• No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion, nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man, and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example ~Thomas Jefferson