“The Constitution is a written instrument. As such it's meaning does not alter. That which it meant when adopted, it means now.” ~ United States Supreme Court South Carolina vs. United States (1905)

“We may be tossed upon an ocean where we can see no land -- nor, perhaps, the sun or stars. But there is a chart and a compass for us to study, to consult, and to obey. That chart is the Constitution.” ~ Daniel Webster (1782-1852) US Senator

“It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part.” ~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father

“The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“When you run in debt; you give to another power over your liberty.” ~ Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) US Founding Father

“Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate; we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other.” ~ John Locke (1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist

“It is true, the yeomanry of the country possess the lands, the weight of property, possess arms, and are too strong a body of men to be openly offended—and, therefore, it is urged, they will take care of themselves, that men who shall govern will not dare pay any disrespect to their opinions. It is easily perceived, that if they have not their proper negative upon passing laws in congress, or on the passage of laws relative to taxes and armies, they may in twenty or thirty years be by means imperceptible to them, totally deprived of that boasted weight and strength: This may be done in great measure by congress.” ~ Richard Henry Lee (1732-1794) Founding Father Letters From The Federal Farmer (1787)

“Governors have no Right to seek and take what they please; by this, instead of being content with the Station assigned them, that of honorable Servants of the Society, they would soon become Absolute Masters, Despots, and Tyrants. Hence, as a private Man has a Right to say what Wages he will give in his private Affairs, so has a Community to determine what they will give and grant of their Substance for the Administration of public Affairs.” ~ Samuel Adams (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and Other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston in Town Meeting Assembled, According to Law. Published by Order of the Town. Nov 20 1772

“Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.” ~ Patrick Henry (1736-1799) US Founding Father 3 J. Elliot, The Debates In The Several States Conventions On The Adoption Of The Federal Constitution 168-69 (1836 Reprinted 1941).

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President First Inaugural Address; March 4, 1801

“Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reenactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President

“We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom. And to preserve their independence, We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers. Our land-holders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation. This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagances. And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for the second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Letter to Samuel Kercheval, Monticello, July 12, 1816

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Virginia Statutes of Religious Freedom, 1779.

“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father's has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association -- the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.” ~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President Note in Tracy's "Political Economy," 1816

“It is very certain that [the commerce clause] grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President letter dated February 13, 1829

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” ~ James Madison (1751-1836), Father of the Constitution for the USA, 4th US President 1792, in disapproval of Congress appropriating $15,000 to assist some French refugees

“Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author

“Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets.” ~ Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) 40th US President

“It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.” ~ Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) [Claude Frederic Bastiat] French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before -- and immediately following -- the French Revolution of February 1848 "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat (1848)

“If Congress sees fit to impose a capitation, or other direct tax, it must be laid in proportion to the census; if Congress determines to impose duties, imposts, and excises, they must be uniform throughout the United States. These are not strictly limitations of power. They are rules prescribing the mode in which it shall be exercised. ... This review shows that personal property, contracts, occupations, and the like have never been regarded by Congress as proper subjects of direct tax.” ~ Salmon P. Chase (1808-1873) U.S. Senator from Ohio, 23rd Governor of Ohio, U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln, 6th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court As Chief Justice delivering the opinion of the Court in Veazie Bank v. Fenno, 76 U.S. 8 Wallace 533 (1869)

“Beware the greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry.” ~ Thomas Paine (1737-1809) US Founding father, pamphleteer, author