Melville Fuller Quotes

My goal was to make New Jersey's state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government.

But again, you know, the views that we've expressed are transferring power back from the federal government to the states, giving Alaska an incredible opportunity to expand its economy, especially at a time when our federal government is coming close to bankruptcy. So that is a broad-based appeal. It's not an extreme view.

The United States being a limited form of government, one of the restrictions to which it is subject is in regard to its power to levy taxes. The States may levy them for a great many purposes for which Congress cannot, because to the States belong all of the powers not delegated to Congress.

The Obama administration came into Utah and said, 'We're not going to listen to what the U.S. Supreme Court said. 'We, the federal government, are going to recognize marriages in the state of Utah and Utah state law explicitly does not recognize as marriage,' and that was really, in my view, an abuse of power.

Obama's defiantly vowed not only to radically expand the reach of government from cradle to grave, but to smash the Constitution's restrictions on government power while doing it.

The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA - there is no role at the federal level for the Department of Education.

Some of them, in accepting the proposed plan of government, coupled their acceptance with a recommendation of various additions to the Constitution, which they deemed essential to the preservation of the rights of the States, or of the People.

Let the national government be armed with positive and complete authority.

We considered the Alien and Sedition Acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States of all powers whatsoever... We view this as seizing the rights of the States and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government

The Constitution preserves the autonomy and independence of the States; “federal supervision of their action” is in no case permissible except as to matters specifically delegated to the United States. Any interference ... except as thus permitted is an invasion of the authority of the States

There simply is no greater threat to individual liberty and the viability of our great nation than the threat that comes from the continued consolidation of power in Washington, a consolidation that flies in the face of the division of power between the federal government and the states that is required by the Constitution.

I am a true constitutionalist, and whether it is our state's rights, personal property rights or the right to bear arms, the federal government will know if they come to Michigan trying to trample our rights, it will have a fight on its hands under a Bouchard administration.

The powers of the federal government ... result from the compact to which the states are parties, [and are] limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact.

The Second Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, was meant to inhibit only the federal government, not the states. The framers, as The Federalist Papers attest (see No. 28), saw the state militias as forces that might be summoned into action against the federal government itself, if it became tyrannical.

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

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.

Our goal is to displace the entrenched powers in Washington, restore the rightful balance between the state and federal government.

In its exterior relations - abroad - this government is the sole and exclusive representative of the united majesty, sovereignty, and power of the States, constituting this great and glorious Union. To the rest of the world, we are one. Neither State nor State government is known beyond our borders. Within, it is different.

The backlash against Big Government is an encouraging sign of a growing resistance to the mission creep of federal power.

The health care reform legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last night clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and infringes on each state's sovereignty.

I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system.

Now is the time for all Alaskans to come together and reach out with our core message of taking power from the federal government and bringing it back home to the people.

The danger in our system is that the general government, which represents the interests of the whole, may encroach on the states, which represent the peculiar and local interests, or that the latter may encroach on the former.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.