Power will some time or other be abused unless men are well watched, and checked by something they cannot remove when they please.

Experience...evinces, that the happiest dispositions are not proof against the allurements of power...authority endures not the very idea of restraint; nor does it cease to struggle till it has completely freed itself.

I do verily believe, that if the principle were to prevail, of a common law [referring to a single government] being in force in the United States...it would become the most corrupt government on earth.

Let the General Government be reduced to foreign concerns only, and let our affairs be disentangled from those of all other nations, except as to commerce, which the merchants will manage the better, the more they are left free to manage for themselves, and our General Government may be reduced to a very simple organization, and a very unexpensive one; a few plain duties to be performed by a few servants.

Government does not create liberty; on the contrary, government is the persisting danger to human liberty.

[T]he sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection...to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship.