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The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.

At no time during the period intervening between the ratification of the Constitution and the inauguration of the new government were the leaders in Federalism certain that the agrarian party, which had opposed the Constitution, might not render the instrument ineffectual by securing possession of Congress.

The Constitution of the United States, like all systems of government which are permanent, had its origin in the history and necessities of the people through whose instrumentality and for whose benefit it was formed.

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government: but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature, a type nowhere at present existing.

The founders were very worried that if parties developed in America, you might have something like the modern Italian system, where you have 20 different parties that divide Congress and the country and can't govern.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

My thesis was a defense of our Constitution on the terms that the founding fathers wrote specifically in the Federalist Papers. They hoped that our form of government would draw forward men and women who are the wisest, most prudent, and most experienced.

I believe that this is the key, the principle itself is the key to conservatism. Because in many ways if you do not have a principled base you do not have policy and if you do not have policy in many ways you do not have an ideology.

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.