"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." - Declaration of Independence

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson

"But I am of the opinion that a centralized administration is fit only to enervate the nations in which it exists, by incessantly diminishing their local spirit.  Although such an administration can bring together at a given moment, on a given point, all the disposable resources of a people, it injures the renewal of those resources." - Alexis de Tocqueville

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:  You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." - James Madison

"Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead o fwhich it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race.  Need we any other proof of their wretched management, then the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?" - Thomas Paine