Butler Shaffer on constitutions

Formal constitutions were written, presuming to create a state by contract, in the collective name of “We the people.” In the American version, political authority was to be disbursed among three major branches, with the legislative branch to enjoy sovereign power; a proposition that would make it difficult – if not impossible – for an individual to enjoy unchecked authority. Coupled with the illusion that the exercise of power could be restrained by words written on parchment, it was believed that reasonable persons could therefore trust state power. That some of the most repressive actions of the Soviet Union were conducted under a written constitution loosely modeled on the American one, should disabuse anyone of the thought that governmental powers could be restrained by words.

~ Butler Shaffer, "The Myth of the Constitution," LewRockwell.com, April 5, 2017

USSR Constitution Day
1949

William H. Taft on the Constitution and the public good

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof.  There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

~ William H. Taft

George Orwell on the corruption of language

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Charles Darwin on survival and adaptability

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

~ Charles Darwin

Victor Hugo on the power of ideas

More powerful than armies is an idea whose time has come.

~ Victor Hugo

Alexis de Tocqueville on centralization and war

All military geniuses love centralization, which increases their strength, and all centralizing geniuses love war, which obliges nations to concentrate all powers in the hands of the state.

~ Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Volume 2 (1840)

Milton Friedman on visible and hidden effects of government programs

People hired by government know who is their benefactor. People who lose their jobs or fail to get them because of the government program do not know that that is the source of their problem. The good effects are visible. The bad effects are invisible. The good effects generate votes. The bad effects generate discontent, which is as likely to be directed at private business as at the government.

~ Milton Friedman

John Adams on civic responsibility

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature...  It becomes necessary to every [citizen] then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for himself... the... political principles and measures.  Let us examine them with a sober... Christian spirit.

~ John Adams

John Adams & His House
1940

Albert Einstein on imagination

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

~ Albert Einstein

Will Rogers on winning an argument

People's minds are changed through observation and not through argument.

~ Will Rogers

Will Rogers on the busybody state

Now if there is one thing that we do worse than any other nation, it is try and manage somebody else's affairs.

~ Will Rogers

Will Rogers on self promotion

Get someone else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.

~ Will Rogers

Will Rogers on knowledge

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

~ Will Rogers, humorist

Will Rogers on learning

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

~ Will Rogers

Will Rogers on Congress

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

~ Will Rogers