A constitution defines and limits the powers of the government it creates. It therefore follows, as a natural and also a logical result, that the governmental exercise of any power not authorized by the constitution is an assumed power, and therefore illegal.

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Government is best which governs least

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The greatest tyrannies are always perpetuated in the name of the noblest causes.

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You cannot undermine police authority and then complain about rising crime.

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I prefer peace. But if trouble must come, let it come in my time, so that my children can live in peace.

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A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

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No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.

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The slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.

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When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to [profess] things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

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Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.

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