I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple. Were we directed from Washington when to sow, when to reap, we should soon want bread.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people’ (10th Amendment). To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible to any definition.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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The government of the State has provided for the common schools up to the eighth grade, and meets the general expenses of these schools. The treasury of this state has provided for one of the best universities that can be found in any state in the Union; thoroughly equipped for the highest education in the land. The State Legislature has also provided out of the State treasury, for an agricultural college, a most worthy and efficient institution of instruction and training for the youth of the people of the state. In addition to these, we are having forced upon the people high schools throughout every part of the land. I believe that we are running education mad. I believe that we are taxing the people more for education than they should be taxed. This is my sentiment. And especially is it my sentiment when the fact is known that all these burdens are placed upon the tax payers of the state to teach the learning or education of this world. God is not in it. Religion is excluded from it. The Bible is excluded from it. And those who desire to have their children receive the advantages of moral and religious education are excluded from all these state organizations, and if we will have our children properly taught in principles of righteousness, morality and religion, we have to establish Church schools or institutions of education of our own, and thus the burdens of taxation are increased upon the people. We have to do it in order that our children may have the advantages of moral training in their youth. I know that I shall be criticized by professional “lovers of education,” for expressing my idea in relation to this matter.

Source: President Joseph F. Smith
General Conference, October 1915

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There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

Source: John Adams

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It is not my belief nor is it the doctrine of my Church that the Constitution is a fully grown document. On the contrary, we believe it must grow and develop to meet the changing needs of an advancing world. We know that greed and avarice and lust for power and dominion over men are always with us, and will be until the millennium shall come. We know that these curses of men never sleep nor die, that they alter their ways of vice to evade the control of law and order. We know that sometimes they reach such size and influence that their handling may require changes not only in legislation but on rare occasion, in the Constitution itself. But all changes must be made to protect and preserve our liberties, not to take them from us. Greater freedom, not slavery, must follow every constitutional change.

So we do hold that in all that relates to its great fundamentals—in the division of powers and their full independence one from the other, in the equal administration of the laws, in the even-handed dispensing of justice, in the absence of all class and casts, in the freedom of the press and of speech and of religion—we believe that in all such matters as these our Constitution must not be changed.

Source: J. Reuben Clark
Given in 1938, Vital Speeches, 4:177
Prophets Principles And National Survival, p.87

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It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.

Source: Benjamin Franklin

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Why suspend the habeas corpus in insurrections and rebellions? Examine the history of England. See how few of the cases of the suspension of the habeas corpus law have been worthy of that suspension. They have been either real treasons, wherein the parties might as well have been charged at once, or sham plots, where it was shameful they should ever have been suspected. Yet for the few cases wherein the suspension of the habeas corpus has done real good, that operation is now become habitual and the minds of the nation almost prepared to live under its constant suspension.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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May [the Declaration of Independence] be to the world, what I believe it will be (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man.

Source: Thomas Jefferson

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