Able Quote by James Madison

The science of government is only a science of combinations, of applications, and of exceptions, according to times, places and circumstances.

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to…

— James Madison

A government does not desire its powers to be strictly defined, but the subjects require the line to be drawn with increasing precision.

— Lord Acton

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments…

— James Madison

For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm.

— Niccolo Machiavelli

Competence doesn't seem like a big deal until you are forced to realize that your own government has none.

— Bruce Sterling

The government, which is the supreme authority in states, must be in the hands of one, or of a few, or of the many.…

— Aristotle (384â323 BC

People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.

— Laozi

“It may just be," he added, "that there is something fundamentally unworkable about government itself. As long as Homo sapiens terra is a wild…

— H. Beam Piper

So that the executive and legislative branches of the national government depend upon, and emanate from the states. Every where the state sovereignties are…

— Joseph Story

If it be said that the legislative body are themselves the constitutional judges of their own powers, and that the construction they put upon…

— Alexander Hamilton

No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.

— Don Marquis