From the Founders: Knowledge of the Constitution

“One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one.” ~ James Madison, Federalist No. 48

“Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge.” ~ James Wilson, Of the Study of the Law in the United States, 1790

“Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities.” ~ Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 34

“If it be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of our security in a Republic? The answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws — the first growing out of the last. … A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.” ~ Alexander Hamilton, Essay in the American Daily Advertiser, 1794

“Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.” ~ Thomas Jefferson, letter to Wilson Nicholas, 1803

“Whatever may be the judgment pronounced on the competency of the architects of the Constitution, or whatever may be the destiny of theĀ  edifice prepared by them, I feel it a duty to express my profound and solemn conviction … that there never was an assembly of men, charged with a great and arduous trust, who were more pure in their motives, or more exclusively or anxiously devoted to the object committed to them.” ~ James Madison

“Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” ~ James Madison, Federalist No. 55