51
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
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52
Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.
53
The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
Gerald Fordverified·Remarks on Signing a Proclamation Granting Pardon to Richard Nixon·September 8, 1974
54
Every citizen owes to the country a vigilant watch and close scrutiny of its public servants and a fair and reasonable estimate of their fidelity and usefulness.
55
Government has a right to survive and powers conferred upon it are not necessarily set at naught by the express prohibitions of the Bill of Rights.
56
My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will.
57
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures
Harry S. Trumanverified·Address Before a Joint Session of Congress (the Truman Doctrine)·March 12, 1947
58
The animosities of elections should have no place in our Government, for government must concern itself alone with the common weal.
59
The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.
60
Our whole system of self-government will crumble either if officials elect what laws they will enforce or citizens elect what laws they will support.
61
The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.
62
The more the Afro-American yields and cringes and begs, the more he has to do so, the more he is insulted, outraged and lynched.
63
By the theory of our Government majorities rule, but this right is not an arbitrary or unlimited one.
64
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.
65
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.
66
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
67
It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising the sovereignty.
68
the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.
69
A President may sense and proclaim that new spirit, but only a people can provide it.
70
Can authority be more amiable and respectable when it descends from accidents or institutions established in remote antiquity than when it springs fresh from the hearts and judgments of an honest and enlightened people?
71
It is their power and majesty that is reflected, and only for their good, in every legitimate government, under whatever form it may appear.
72
In the midst of these pleasing ideas we should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections.
73
No body can give more power than he has himself; and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it.
74
It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.
75
Any broader view of this authority would effectively empower a majority to silence dissidents simply as a matter of personal predilections.