American Heritage Exam 2 Quotes
Federalist #51-James Madison
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place"
Frederick Douglass
"America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future."
Abraham Lincoln
"I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments."
John Marshall
"The powers of the legislature are defined and limited..."
Federalist #55-James Madison
"As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: So there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form"
Federlist #10-James Madison
"By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community"
Alexander Hamilton
"The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power"
James Madison
"Encroachments by the states on the federal authority"
James Madison
"Failure of the states to comply with the Constitutional requisitions"
Federalist #84-Alexander Hamilton
"For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?"
Brutus
"History furnishes no example of a free republic, any thing like the extent of the United States"
Continental Congress
"... it is expedient that on the second Monday in May next a convention of delegates who shall have been appointed by the several States be held at Philadelphia for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation..."
Federalist #51-James Madison
"A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions"
Thomas Jefferson
"A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government"
Mary Ann Glendon
"A rapidly expanding catalog of rights - extending to trees, animals, smokers, nonsmokers, consumers, and so on - not only multiplies the occasions for collisions, but it risks trivializing core democratic values. A tendency to frame nearly every social controversy in terms of a clash of rights impedes compromise, mutual understanding, and the discovery of common ground"
Abraham Lincoln
"All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments which originated in and were given to the world from this Hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence."
George Washington
"The spirit of party agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, [and] kindles the animosity of one part against another"
George Washington
"I am mortified beyond expression when I view the clouds that have spread over the brightest morn that ever dawned in any country... What a triumph for the advocates of despotism, to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallicious"
Mitt Romney
"I'll sit down with leaders -- the Democratic leaders, as well as Republican leaders, ... as we did in my state -- we met every Monday for a couple hours, talked about the issues and the challenges ... in our state. We have to work on a collaborative basis, not because we're going to compromise our principle, but because there's common ground"
Federalist #51-James Madison
"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"
Brutus
"If respect is to be paid to the opinion of the greatest and wisest men who have ever thought or wrote on the science of government, we shall be constrained to conclude, that a free republic cannot succeed over a country of such immense extent, containing such a number of inhabitants..."
Jonathon Rauch
"If the Constitution were all we had, politicians would be incapable of getting organized to accomplish even routine tasks. Every day, for every bill or compromise, they would have to start from scratch, rounding up hundreds of individual politicians and answering to thousands of squabbling constituencies and millions of voters. By itself, the Constitution is a recipe for chaos"
Brutus
"In a republic, the manners, sentiments, and interests of the people should be similar. If this be not the case, there will be a constant clashing of opinions; and the representatives of one part will be continually striving against those of the other. This will retard the operations of government"
Federalist #51-James Madison
"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"
Brutus
"In so extensive a republic, the great officers of government would soon become above the controul of the people.... It is scarcely possible, in a very large republic, to call them to account for their misconduct, or to prevent their abuse of power"
John Marshall
"It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each"
Federalist #78-Alexander Hamilton
"It is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches"
Montesquieu
"It is natural to a republic to have only a small territory, otherwise it cannot long subsist"
Federalist #78-Alexander Hamilton
"It may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments"
Federalist #68-Alexander Hamilton
"It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in their choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided"
Federalist #68-Alexander Hamilton
"It will not be too strong to say, that there will be a constant probability of seeing the station filled by characters pre-eminent for ability and virtue"
Thomas Jefferson
"Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things"
John C. Calhoun
"Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world...."
George Fitzhugh
"Masters treat their sick, infant, and helpless slaves well, not only from felling and affection, but from motives of self-interest"
Federalist #62-James Madison
"No government, any more than an individual, will long be respected without being truly respectable; nor be truly respectable, without possessing a certain portion of order and stability"
Federalist #78-Alexander Hamilton
"No legislative act...contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize but what they forbid"
Chief Justice Roger Taney
"On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings."
E.E. Schattschneider
"Political parties created modern democracy and modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of the parties"
Samuel Adams
"Rebellion against a king may be pardoned, or lightly punished, but the man who dares to rebel against the laws of a republic ought to suffer death"
Federalist #68-Alexander Hamilton
"Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State;"
Richard Neustadt
"The Constitution of 1787 is supposed to have created a government of 'separated powers.' It did nothing of the sort. Rather it created a government of separated institutions sharing powers."
Federalist #78-Alexander Hamilton
"The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community. The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated. The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever"
John C. Calhoun
"The North has acquired a decided ascendancy over every department of this Government, and through it a control over all the powers of the system"
John C. Calhoun
"The [Constitutional] Convention meant to leave slavery in the States as they found it, entirely under the authority and control of the States themselves."
Federalist #47-James Madison
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny"
John C. Calhoun
"The character of the Government has been changed...from a federal republic, as it originally came from the hands of its framers, into a great national consolidated democracy"
John Marshall
"The constitution is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary means, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative act, and like other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it..."
James Henry Hammond
"The difference between [North and South] is, that our slaves are hired for life and well compensated; there is no starvation, no begging, no want of employment among our people.... Why, you meet more beggars in one day, in any single street of the city of New York, than you would meet in a lifetime in the whole South"
Federalist #10-James Madison
"The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man..."
Federalist #68-Alexander Hamilton
"The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without sever censure...I...hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent"
George Fitzhugh
"The negro slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world....when the labors of the day are over, and free in mind as well as body; for the master provides food, raiment, house, fuel, and everything else necessary to the physical well-being of himself and family"
Federalist #84-Alexander Hamilton
"The truth is, after all the declamations we have heard, that the Constitution is itself, in every rational sense, and to every useful purpose, a Bill of Rights"
Brutus
"Those who are to be vested with [judicial power] are to be placed in a situation altogether unprecedented in a free country. They are to be rendered totally independent, both of the people and of the legislature"
James Madison
"Trespasses of the states on the rights of each other"
James Madison
"Want of concert in matters where common interest requires it"
Carl von Clausewitz
"War is 'an extension of politics by other means'"
Abraham Lincoln
"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing."
Thomas Jefferson
"We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists"
George Fitzhugh
"We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments 'derive their powers from the consent of the governed.' The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success...."
Federalist #10-James Madison
"When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government...enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens"
Federalist #51-James Madison
"[Contrive] the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places"
John Marshall
"[Not striking down unconstitutional law] would be giving the legislature a practical and real omnipotence..."
Gettysburg Address-Abraham Lincoln
"a new birth of freedom...government of the people, by the people, for the people"
Federalist #71-Alexander Hamilton
"and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure"
Gettysburg Address-Abraham Lincoln
"dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal"
Chief Justice Roger Taney
Black "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."
George Fitzhugh
In the North, "they hold that all men, women, and negroes, and smart children are equals, and entitled to equal rights... The experiment which they will make, we fear, is absurd..."
Chief Justice Roger Taney
The writers of the Declaration of Independence "perfectly understood the meaning of the language they used, and how it would be understood by others; and they knew that it would not in any part of the civilized world be supposed to embrace the negro race, which, by common consent, had been excluded from civilized Governments and the family of nations, and doomed to slavery."