Quotes About The Federalist

#1. If your friend wishes to read your 'Plutarch's Lives,' 'Shakespeare,' or 'The Federalist Papers,' tell him gently but firmly, to buy a copy. You will lend him your car or your coat - but your books are as much a part of you as your head or your heart.

Mortimer J. Adler

#2. The Federalist Society is changing the culture of our nation's law schools. You are returning the values and concepts of law as our founders understood them to scholarly dialogue, and through that dialogue, to our legal institutions.

Ronald Reagan

#3. We should understand the Constitution as the founders meant that it should be understood. We can do this by reading their words about it, such as those contained in the Federalist Papers. Such understanding is essential if we are to preserve what God has given us.

Ezra Taft Benson

#4. The framers of the Constitution were so clear in the federalist papers and elsewhere that they felt an independent judiciary was critical to the success of the nation.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#5. In Madison's famous formulation in the Federalist, constitutional restrictions on government assume that we "first enable the government to control the governed." If the public authorities can be outgunned or bribed, the vibrancy of the private sector can be pathological.

Stephen Holmes

#6. Throughout the history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition, the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition, the authoritarian tradition and the libertarian tradition.

Pyotr Kropotkin

#7. The best critical consideration of the inherent weakness of a federation of states in which the law of the federation has to be enforced on the states who are its members is contained in the Federalist Papers.

Kenneth Waltz

#8. For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, A power over a man's subsistence amounts to a power over his will.

Henry Hazlitt

#9. I am the happiest person I've ever met. This is what Buddhist Yoga and a healthy dose of reading the Declaration of the Independence, The Constitution and the Federalist Papers and anything else I could get my hands on has given me.

Frederick Lenz

#10. The sophisticates of Java, the traders of Sumatra, the peasants from the outer islands found no common ground. During siesta time from one to five, the Islamic group met separately, the Nationalist group met separately, the Federalist and Unitarians met separately.

Sukarno

#11. Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.

Jonah Goldberg

#12. The author characterizes Hamilton's tone in the Federalist papers by saying that he never spoke of problems but of being at the last stage in the crisis.

John Ferling

#13. The purpose of the Federalist Society was to bring together young people who had this skepticism about what they were being taught and to let them know that there were others who shared this skepticism.

Antonin Scalia

#14. I want to commend the [Federalist] Society for bringing together the best minds from right, left, and center to debate the most pressing legal issues of the day.

Samuel Alito

#15. The Internet's distinct configuration may have facilitated anonymous threats, copyright infringement, and cyberattacks, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom in ways that the framers of the American constitution would appreciate - the Federalist papers were famously authored pseudonymously.

Jonathan Zittrain

#16. As Alexander Hamilton said in 'The Federalist Papers,' law is about the exercise of judgment and not will. Judicial activism is best understood as substituting judicial opinion for the command of law. The law is not an infinitely malleable tool.

Edwin Meese

#17. There is really quite an inherent danger in the traditional British view that the council of ministers and inter-governmentalism is your protection against the federalist superstate.

Gisela Stuart

#18. I am proud to say that the Federalist Society was founded in part at the University of Chicago, and one of its best characteristics has been an attack on liberal shibboleths by looking at real consequences and specific problems and by asking what law actually does.

Cass Sunstein

#19. Rather than make peace with John Adams, he was ready, if necessary, to blow up the Federalist party and let Jefferson become president. The

Ron Chernow

#20. The rich and the well-born, according to the Federalist Papers, was greatly feared by the founders.

John Jay Hooker

#21. The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.

Roy Moore

#22. The Constitution's pretty clear. The Federalist papers are pretty clear ... They very specifically delegated the power to declare war to Congress. They wanted this to be a congressional decision; they did not want war to be engaged in by the executive without approval of Congress.

Rand Paul

#23. A good Government implies two things: first, fidelity to the object of Government, which is the happiness of the People; secondly, a knowledge of the means by which that object can be best attained.

James Madison

#24. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

James Madison

#25. You can look at founding father Alexander Hamilton nevertheless assuring - assuring - the countrymen in Federalist 78 that the role of the federal courts under the proposed Constitution would be limited.

Sam Brownback

#26. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I'm a federalist.

John McCain

#27. They [Federalist European Politicians] divide their time between court room, prison and debating chamber - giving a whole new meaning to the term 'conviction politician'.

Margaret Thatcher

#28. Justin Butterfield of Illinois, a Federalist-turned-Whig, said of the Mexican-American War, said, "I opposed one war and it ruined me. From now on I am for war, pestilence and famine.

Michael S. Green

#29. You know, we have main English language parties, federalist parties, and traditionally the ones to watch would be the Conservatives, who form the government, and then the Liberals.

Rick Mercer

#30. James Madison made clear in Federalist 51 that that this elaborate structure - today often derided as " gridlock " - was created to protect individual freedom against oppression by the majority or by powerful interest groups who exploit government power for their own purposes.

Anonymous

#31. The great and radical vice in the construction of the existing Confederation is in the principle of LEGISLATION for STATES or GOVERNMENTS, in their CORPORATE or COLLECTIVE CAPACITIES, and as contradistinguished from the INDIVIDUALS of which they consist.

Alexander Hamilton

#32. If I could not go to heaven with but a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore, I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much further from that of the anti-federalists.

Thomas Jefferson

#33. When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was almost completely woven.

Herbert Croly

#34. I am not a Federalist," he declared in 1789, "because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever. ... If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.

Joseph J. Ellis

#35. through the transcript. Some colleagues, at least, found the whole exercise droll. Fisher Ames, a Federalist

Michael Waldman

#36. To deal with what a High Federalist claimed was the "army of spies and incendiaries scattered through the continent," two acts authorized the deportation of aliens who were already in the country.44

John Ferling

#37. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rending us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties, and promote our happiness.

James Madison

#38. An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized, as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power, and hostile to the principles of liberty.

Alexander Hamilton

#39. During the election of Washington's successor, it became apparent that the country was sharply divided and that the dissatisfaction with Federalist policies was deep and fervent.

Charles A. Beard

#40. Instead of defining a few rights, Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 84, "Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain everything, they have no need of particular reservations.

Thom Hartmann