Thomas Paine: “The representative system takes society and civilisation for its basis; nature, reason, and experience, for its guide.”

The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax.

It was a sort of new form of government that insensibly served to put the old one out of sight and to unhinge it from the superstitious authority of antiquity.

The argument changes from hereditary rights to hereditary wisdom; and the question is, Who is the wisest man?

A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact.