Federal government Quote by James Madison

The best reason to be assigned, in this case, for not having made the Constitution more free from a charge of uncertainty in its…

— James Madison

Perhaps sensing the dismal failure of its efforts to show that 'established by the State' means 'established by the State or the Federal Government,'…

— Antonin Scalia

Nothing can be clearer than that what the Constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of…

— Melville Fuller

The Constitution's framers intended to restrict central authority to the few areas that could not be handled by states. The drafters would be horrified…

— Doug Bandow

“We see then, in the first years of the Constitution, that some of its provisions—even those paraded most flamboyantly (like the First Amendment)—might be…

— Howard Zinn

It is rare that a legislature reasons. It is too quickly impassioned.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen's behavior, it was writtne to restrain the government's behavior.

— Rand Paul

“The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed…

— Ulysses S. Grant

“within rigidly circumscribed guidelines. All powers not specifically granted to the federal government are reserved to the states and the people. The Founding Fathers…

— Mark Meckler

The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This…

— Mike Huckabee

It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the Delegates from so many different States . . . should unite in…

— George Washington

“In short, it is remarkably difficult to find instances in nineteenth-century federal law in which the executive offered relief to anyone in the rest…

— Philip Hamburger