Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens.

–George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

If only there were means available to ensure Congresscritters always returned to the general mass of people and had to live exactly as the general mass do.

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.

–Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Not enslaving future generations to debt: common sense in 1776, unheard of in 2013.

The instability of our laws is really an immense evil. I think it would be well to provide in our constitutions that there shall always be a twelve-month between the ingross-ing a bill & passing it: that it should then be offered to its passage without changing a word: and that if circum-stances should be thought to require a speedier passage, it should take two thirds of both houses instead of a bare majority.

–Thomas Jefferson, Letter to James Madison, 1787

If only we paid more attention to the brilliance of our founders…

A fondness for power is implanted, in most men, and it is natural to abuse it, when acquired.

–Alexander Hamilton

Seemed appropriate, given all we’ve recently learned about our government, especially the NSA.

A Constitution is not the act of a Government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is a power without right.

–Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791

[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

–John Adams, Speech on Independence Day to the House of Representatives, 1821

But while property is considered as the basis of the freedom of the American yeomanry, there are other auxiliary supports; among which is the information of the people. In no country, is education so general – in no country, have the body of the people such a knowledge of the rights of men and the principles of government. This knowledge, joined with a keen sense of liberty and a watchful jealousy, will guard our constitutions and awaken the people to an instantaneous resistance of encroachments.

–Noah Webster, On Education of Youth in America, 1790

We have lost our knowledge of our rights and how our government is supposed to work. We have fallen asleep.

Those gentlemen, who will be elected senators, will fix themselves in the federal town, and become citizens of that town more than of your state.

–George Mason, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788

Prescient.

There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong…. In fact it is only reestablishing under another name and a more specious form, force as the measure of right.

—James Madison, letter to James Monroe, 1786

We are a nation of laws, a republic. Not a mob-rules democracy.

Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind.

–James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1790