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    Insight “We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts – not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution. To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.” --Abraham Lincoln “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 further, 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 “Experience has shown that even under the best forms [of government], those entrusted with power have in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and… the most effectual means of preventing this would be to illuminate, as far as applicable, the minds of the people at large.” --Thomas Jefferson “I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations… This danger ought to be wisely guarded against.” --Madison “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” --Benjamin Franklin “But neither the wisest Constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose masters are universally corrupt. He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.” --Samuel Adams “Still one thing more, fellow citizens, a wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.” --Thomas Jefferson “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.” --Alexis de Tocqueville “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” --John Adams “Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea. If there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men; so that we do not depend upon their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.” --James Madison “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” --Thomas Jefferson “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” --Benjamin Franklin “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that the people preserve the spirit of resistance?” --Thomas Jefferson “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countryman.” --Samuel Adams “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience has shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.” --Declaration of Independence “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence – it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” --George Washington
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