"Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything..." - Quote by Benjamin Franklin

“The misers cheese is wholesomest”

“Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have either one.”

“Disdain the chain, preserve your freedom; and maintain your independency: be industrious and free; be frugal and free.”

“Change of ministers amounts to nothing. One goes out, another comes in, and still the same measures, vices, and extravagances are pursued. It signifies not who is minister. The defect lies in the system. The foundation and superstructure of the government is bad. Prop it as you please, it continually sinks and ever will.”

“We have the best Congress that money can buy.”

“No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.”

“In the same period that the Americans have lived under one constitution our French friends notched up five. A Punch cartoon has a 19th century Englishman asking a librarian for a copy of the French constitution, only to be told: 'I am sorry Sir, we do not stock periodicals.'”

“And as a man, who is attached to a prostitute, is unfitted to choose or judge of a wife, so any prepossession in favour of a rotten constitution of government will disable us from discerning a good one.”

“The trouble with the theory [of limited and divided government] is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. This is where the living and breathing constitution comes from. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life.”