Abraham Lincoln Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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

The Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

The [founding] fathers hoped not to create a system of party government under a constitution, but rather a constitutional government that would check and control parties.

The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory…

Let all Americans sit down and read this great document. Since the Constitution's ratification, it has been the framework for our great nation.

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

I do believe that it was through divine providence that the Founding Fathers drafted a document that created a government that didn't trust each other - hence the separation of powers. And then, to close the deal, the Bill of Rights was added to continue to protect individual rights and freedoms.

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.

Our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here, the people rule.

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

Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

Government is necessary for our survival. We need government in order to survive. The Founding Fathers created a special place for government. It is called the Constitution.

In 1987, the United States celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the constitutional convention that provided the basic rules for the American political order. This convention was one of the very few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen.

First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.

What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it.

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

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 Framers (of the Constitution) were not concerned primarily with favoring one type of government over another, but with limiting the power of government, regardless of its source.

The Founding Fathers didn’t intend for the lawyers to run this country

The genius of American government consists of the creative tension between conservatives on the one hand and liberals on the other hand..

The American political system was created by a bunch of geniuses so that it could be run by a bunch of idiots.

The founding fathers set up this country as a republic—not a democracy.