The right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively is essential to the balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends.
At the start of his first term Lincoln was supportive of States rights.
The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.
We need to understand that we've divided our country in language based states. So what happens is that more regional parties come in the front and different opinions don't let any one particular strong decision to pass through.
Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.
Texans can run Texas without the federal government telling them what to do.
On the day I became Soviet leader, in March 1985, I had a special meeting with the leaders of the Warsaw Pact countries and told them: 'You are independent, and we are independent. You are responsible for your policies, we are responsible for ours. We will not intervene in your affairs, I promise you.'
The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation.
In my eight years as governor, I did everything I could to resist federal control of issues that belong to the states.
No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union;
What right to 49 states have to punish the citizens of one state by dumping their garbage in that state without their consent.
Strongly guarded as is the separation between religion and & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history
The unity of the human race, as envisaged by Bahá'u'lláh, implies the establishment of a world commonwealth in which all nations, races, creeds and classes are closely and permanently united, and in which the autonomy of its state members and the personal freedom and initiative of the individuals that compose them are definitely and completely safeguarded.
Our best protection against bigger government in Washington is better government in the states.
We should not pretend that we can remake the domestic structures of governments all over the world.
I think the Indian model of respecting the uniqueness of each religion and, of every state is what makes the country great.
The government of Mexico and the Mexican people do not have to accept provisions that one government unilaterally wants to impose on the other.
Let a durable and firm peace be established and this government be confined rigidly to the few great objects for which it was instituted, leaving the States to contend in generous rivalry to develop, by the arts of peace, their respective resources, and a scene of prosperity and happiness would follow, heretofore unequaled on the globe.
My speculation is that the U.S. does not want to establish the principle that it has to defer to some higher authority before carrying out the use of violence.
The Chinese people have stood up.
History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.
The federal government should be less important in our lives, not more.
I just think it is entirely normal for the United Kingdom to be an independent nation state.
For states' rights advocates, the Constitution is like a contract that is openly violated by one party with impunity. On paper, the states remain sovereign powers, while in reality the federal government appears able to dictate everything from the ingredients of school lunches to speed limits. Congress now routinely collects taxes in order to return the money to the states with conditions on their conforming to federal demands.
The right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question
A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace.