“The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” – James Madison,
Great Quotations, p. 753
“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” – Thomas Jefferson, from his
first Inaugural Address, 4 March, 1801
“But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.” – James Madison, Federalist #51
“It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions…. There are men, in all ages…who mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters…. They think there need be but little restraint upon themselves…. The love of power may sink too deep in their own hearts….Hold on, my friends to the constitution and to the republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” – Daniel Webster
“It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is every where the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; that our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no farther, our confidence may go; . . . In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the Chains of the Constitution“ – Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the 1798 Kentucky Resolutions, #7
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.” – Lord Acton, 1887, from a letter to Bishop Creighton
“When we resist . . . concentrations of power, we are resisting the powers of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.” – Woodrow Wilson
“The tyrant overthrows the whole . . . constitution not by seizing any new powers, but by the misuse of the power he already possesses.” — (Cicero, The Republic II, 51)
“I insist, that if there is anything which it is the duty of the whole people to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties and institutions.” — Abraham Lincoln
