Edmund Burke: “An irregular, convulsive movement may be necessary to throw off an irregular, convulsive disease.”

If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular.

They come from one who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness, and who in his last acts does not wish to belie the tenor of his life.

I think our happy situation owing to our Constitution,--but owing to the whole of it, and not to any part singly,--owing in a great measure to what we have left standing in our several reviews and reformations, as well as to what we have…

But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service.