Acton Republican Town Committee

“Otherwise and usefully employed, as, for example, upon habitations and hearthstones, works of common utility, means of national defense, that amount of labor might have raised the standard of common living in Egypt to a higher plane, besides insuring Egyptian civilization a longer competitive life. But once it had been spent on a pyramid to immortalize the name of Pharaoh it was spent forever.”

"Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causus."

(Happy the man who has learned the causes of things)

"... liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments;"

"... that 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... without which every government degenertes into tyranny."

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite...

The operations of the federal government will be most extensive and important in times of war and danger; those of the State governments, in times of peace and security.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

The natural cure for an ill administration, in a popular or representative constitution, is a change of men.

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... Confidence is everywhere 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... Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go...

I can remember when Democrats believed that it was the duty of America to fight for freedom over tyranny.