Thomas Jefferson
1743-1826
"There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
—— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
—— That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath 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.

"A free people claim their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate."
— Rights of British America, 1774 

"All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God."
— letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 

"An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens ... There has never been a moment of my life in which I should have relinquished for it the enjoyments of my family, my farm, my friends & books."
— letter to John Melish, January 13, 1813 

"It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression ... The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one."
—  letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

"The Constitution... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please."
—  — letter to Judge Spencer Roane, September 6, 1819

"At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account."
— letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

"The construction applied...to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power ... ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument."
—  — Draft Kentucky Resolutions, 1798

"The great object of my fear is the federal judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting, with noiseless foot, and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step, and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them."
— letter to Judge Spencer Roane, Mar 9, 1821

"The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone."
— letter to Thomas Ritchie, December 25, 1820

"Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 19, 1787

"Give up money, give up fame, give up science, give the earth itself and all it contains rather than do an immoral act. And never suppose that in any possible situation, or under any circumstances, it is best for you to do a dishonorable thing, however slightly so it may appear to you ... From the practice of the purest virtue, you may be assured you will derive the most sublime comforts in every moment of life, and in the moment of death."
— letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785

"But of all the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views."
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 14, 1781 

"A morsel of genuine history is a thing so rare as to be always valuable."
— September 8, 1817 

"During the course of administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted, inasmuch as they tend to lessen its usefulness and to sap its safety."
— Second Inaugural Address, December 9, 1805

"But with respect to future debt; would it not be wise and just for that nation to declare in the constitution they are forming that neither the legislature, nor the nation itself can validly contract more debt, than they may pay within their own age, or within the term of 19 years."
— September 6, 1789

"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves."
— letter to Edward Carrington, January 16, 1787

"Harmony in the married state is the very first object to be aimed at."
— letter to Mary Jefferson Eppes, January 7, 1798

"Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them if we basely entail hereditary bondage on them."
— Declaration of the Causes and Necessities of Taking up Arms, July 6, 1775

"I have been happy ... in believing that ... whatever follies we may be led into as to foreign nations, we shall never give up our Union, the last anchor of our hope, and that alone which is to prevent this heavenly country from becoming an arena of gladiators."
— letter to Elbridge Gerry, May 13, 1797

"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
— letter to Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800

"I leave to others the sublime delights of riding in the storm, better pleased with sound sleep and a warmer berth below it encircled, with the society of neighbors, friends and fellow laborers of the earth rather than with spies and sycophants ... I have no ambition to govern men. It is a painful and thankless office."
— December 28, 1796

"I think all the world would gain by setting commerce at perfect liberty."
— July 7, 1785

"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious."
— letter to William Ludlow, September 6, 1824

"If a nation expects to be ignorant ... and free ... in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
— December 28, 1796

"If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy."
— letter to Thomas Cooper, Nov 29, 1802

"In our private pursuits it is a great advantage that every honest employment is deemed honorable. I am myself a nail-maker."
— letter to Jean Nicolas Démeunier, April 29, 1795

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. Subject opinion to coercion: whom will you make your inquisitors?"
— Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1781

"Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding and should, therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties which may make anything mean everything or nothing at pleasure."
— letter to William Johnson, June 12, 1823

"No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms [within his own lands]."
— Draft Constitution for the State of Virginia, June, 1776

"One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them."
— June 19, 1796

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."
— letter to Edward Carrington, May 27, 1788

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
— letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816

"We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."
— letter to John Holmes, Apr 22, 1820

"With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learned to be perfectly indifferent; but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, and to need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be passive."
— letter to Abigail Adams, 1804

"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another."
— letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821

"This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of, not merely to say things which had never been said before; but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take. Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion."
— letter to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825

"This letter will, to you, be as one from the dead. The writer will be in the grave before you can weigh its counsels. Your affectionate and excellent father has requested that I would address to you something which might possibly have a favorable influence on the course of life you have to run; and I too, as a namesake, feel an interest in that course. Few words will be necessary, with good dispositions on your part. Adore God. Reverence and cherish your parents. Love your neighbor as yourself, and your country more than yourself. Be just. Be true. Murmur not at the ways of Providence. So shall the life into which you have entered be the portal to one of eternal and ineffable bliss. And if to the dead it is permitted to care for the things of this world, every action of your life will be under my regard. Farewell."
— letter to Thomas Jefferson Smith, February 21, 1825

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James Madison
1751-1836

"Conscience is the most sacred of all property."
— Essay on Property, March 29, 1792 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

"He was certainly one of the most learned men of the age. It may be said of him as has been said of others that he was a "walking Library," and what can be said of but few such prodigies, that the Genius of Philosophy ever walked hand in hand with him."
— on Thomas Jefferson in a letter to Samuel Harrison Smith, November 4, 1826

The Hegemonic Nature of Democracy (Ochlocracy)
Federalist Paper #10
Subject: "The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection"
Thursday, November 22, 1787

"...
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.  A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.  Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.  Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions."
— essay published in 1787 in the New York "Daily Advertiser";  signed "Publius" 
* (italics mine) Note: In the time of Madison, limitations in transportation and communication prohibited the existence of a far-reaching democracy with a large population.  The "mischiefs of faction," creating the turbulence, contention, and violent end of a democracy in "a society consisting of a small number of citizens," are only magnified in democracies that consist of larger more diverse societies.

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."
— letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792

"It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object."
— Federalist No. 45, January 26, 1788;  signed "Publius"

The Meaning of "General Welfare"
Federalist Paper #41
Subject: "General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution"
Saturday, January 19, 1788

"...
Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

Had no other enumeration or definition of the powers of the Congress been found in the Constitution, than the general expressions just cited, the authors of the objection might have had some color for it; though it would have been difficult to find a reason for so awkward a form of describing an authority to legislate in all possible cases. A power to destroy the freedom of the press, the trial by jury, or even to regulate the course of descents, or the forms of conveyances, must be very singularly expressed by the terms "to raise money for the general welfare."

But what color can the objection have, when a specification of the objects alluded to by these general terms immediately follows, and is not even separated by a longer pause than a semicolon? If the different parts of the same instrument ought to be so expounded, as to give meaning to every part which will bear it, shall one part of the same sentence be excluded altogether from a share in the meaning; and shall the more doubtful and indefinite terms be retained in their full extent, and the clear and precise expressions be denied any signification whatsoever? For what purpose could the enumeration of particular powers be inserted, if these and all others were meant to be included in the preceding general power? Nothing is more natural nor common than first to use a general phrase, and then to explain and qualify it by a recital of particulars. But the idea of an enumeration of particulars which neither explain nor qualify the general meaning, and can have no other effect than to confound and mislead, is an absurdity, which, as we are reduced to the dilemma of charging either on the authors of the objection or on the authors of the Constitution, we must take the liberty of supposing, had not its origin with the latter.

The objection here is the more extraordinary, as it appears that the language used by the convention is a copy from the articles of Confederation. The objects of the Union among the States, as described in article third, are "their common defense, security of their liberties, and mutual and general welfare." The terms of article eighth are still more identical: "All charges of war and all other expenses that shall be incurred for the common defense or general welfare, and allowed by the United States in Congress, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury," etc. A similar language again occurs in article ninth. Construe either of these articles by the rules which would justify the construction put on the new Constitution, and they vest in the existing Congress a power to legislate in all cases whatsoever. But what would have been thought of that assembly, if, attaching themselves to these general expressions, and disregarding the specifications which ascertain and limit their import, they had exercised an unlimited power of providing for the common defense and general welfare? I appeal to the objectors themselves, whether they would in that case have employed the same reasoning in justification of Congress as they now make use of against the convention. How difficult it is for error to escape its own condemnation!"
— essay published in 1788 in the New York "Independent Journal";  signed "Publius" 

"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
— National Gazette Essay, March 27, 1792

"But ambitious encroachments of the federal government, on the authority of the State governments, would not excite the opposition of a single State, or of a few States only. They would be signals of general alarm... But what degree of madness could ever drive the federal government to such an extremity."
— Federalist No. 46, January 29, 1788;  signed "Publius" 

"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution. "
— Federalist No. 39, January 1788;  signed "Publius"

"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own."
— Essay on Property, March 29, 1792

"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."
— Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788;  signed "Publius"

"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 on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them."
— speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 20, 1788

"It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect."
— to an unidentified correspondent, 1833

"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot well be separated."
— Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829

"Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit."
— Federalist No. 51, February 8, 1788;  signed "Publius"

"One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one."
— Federalist No. 48, February 1, 1788;  signed "Publius"

"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse."
— speech in the Virginia constitutional convention, Dec 2, 1829

"The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to control one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controlled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society."
— letter to Thomas Jefferson, October 24, 1787

"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."
— Federalist No. 45, January 26, 1788;  signed "Publius"

"There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
— speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

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 John Adams
(1735-1826)

"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. "
— letter to Abigail Adams, July 17, 1775