Thomas Jefferson Quotes

No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.

The founding leaders of our country believed in a three-part sharing of governmental power, with each branch jealously watching the actions of the other two.

The theory of our governments is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere. The executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of these governments are all of limited and defined powers

People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.

The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

The basic premise of the Constitution was a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances because man was perceived as a fallen creature and would always yearn for more power.

Constitutional government, as designed by the framers, will survive only with a righteous people.

There is not in the whole science of politicks a more solid or a more important maxim than this---that of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles.

The doctrine of separation of powers as adopted by the [Constitutional] Convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power. The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy.

That's what the American system is all about: to keep power divided.

Form such a national government that we think best adapted for the good of the whole.

Individual liberty depends on decentralized government

I'm a federalist.

All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time

The Tea Party movement as I perceive it is all about recognizing the difference between state and federal powers. And that there are limits to federal power that need to be respected.

This Republic was called into being, organized, and is upheld, by a great political doctrine.

The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government.

In our system of democracy, our government works on a system of checks and balances. Instead of stripping power from the courts, I believe we should follow the process prescribed in our Constitution - consideration of a Constitutional amendment.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.

In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power.

What's brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.