It becomes all therefore who are friends of a Government based on free principles to reflect, that by denying the possibility of a system partly federal and partly consolidated, and who would convert ours into one either wholly federal or wholly consolidated, in neither of which forms have individual rights, public order, and external safety, been all duly maintained, they aim a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.

The problem to be solved is, not what form of government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.

The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

[Religious liberty was] in its nature an inalienable right ... because the opinions of men, depending only upon the evidence contemplated by their minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men.

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire.

I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several state governments . . . they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger marks of the inexperience, under which they were framed.