Category Archives: Quotations Freedom

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human …

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other. John Adams
1798, American diplomat and 2nd President of the United States from 1797-1801 (1735-1826)

With respect to the two words general welfare, I have always regarded …

With respect to the two words ‘general welfare,’ I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the ‘Articles of Confederation,’ and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted. James Madison
in a letter to James Robertson(1751-1836)