JAMES WILSON

Without Liberty, Law loses its nature and its name, and becomes oppression. Without Law, Liberty also loses its nature and its name, and becomes licentiousness.

In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people.

The housing market will get worse before it gets better.

Certainly, its important to protect the water system and that covers, certainly, everything from vandals to terrorists.

There is not in the whole science of politicks a more solid or a more important maxim than this---that of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles.

The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes…. Add to all this, that officer is placed high, and is possessed of power far from being contemptible, yet not a single privilege is annexed to his character; far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment

Elections ought to be equal. Elections are equal, when a given number of citizens, in one part of the State, choose as many representatives, as are chosen by the same number of citizens, in any other part of the state.

Remember, that his duty and his business is, not to make the law but to interpret and apply it

The people have the right to know what their Agents are doing or have done, and it should not be in the option of the Legislature to conceal their proceedings.

A single Executive may be responsible, but a numerous one cannot be responsible.

Judicial, Legislative and Executive departments ought to be commensurate

In order to enable and encourage a representative of the publick to discharge his publick trust with firmness and success, it is indispensably necessary that he should enjoy the fullest liberty of speech, and that he should be protected from the resentment of everyone, however powerful, to whom the exercise of that liberty may occasion offence

It we mean to found a national Govt., States must submit like individuals-the Government must be supreme—either the national, or State Government. must be so.

We have seen the Legislatures in our own Country deprive the Citizen of Life, of Liberty & of Property. We have seen Laws of Attainder, Punishment and Confiscation

Nor is there any doubt that the Senate and President possess the power of making treaties.

Judges are objects of aversion and distrust.

The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

The agreement of the parties, the essence of every rational contract, is indispensably required.

Why should we not teach our children those principles, upon which we ourselves have thought and acted? Ought we to instill into their tender minds a theory, especially if unfounded, which is contradictory to our own practice, built on the most solid foundation? Why should we reduce them to the cruel dilemma of condemning, either those principles which they have been taught to believe, or those persons whom they have been taught to revere?

The majority of people wherever found ought in all questions to govern the minority.

The probability is much greater, that the larger States will disagree, than that they will combine. I defy the wit of man to invent a possible case, or to suggest any one thing on earth, which shall be for the interests of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, and which will not also be for the interest of the other States.

… [state] taxation should be in proportion to wealth …

The connection and harmony between Great Britain and us, which it is in her interest and ours to cultivate; and on which her prosperity, as well as ours, so materially depends, will be better preserved by the operation of the legal prerogatives of the Crown, than by the exertion of an unlimited authority by Parliament.

Kings are not the only tyrants. The conduct of the long Parliament will justify in adding that the Kings are not the severest tyrants.

All men are, by nature, equal and free: No one has the right to any authority over another without his consent: All lawful government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: Such consent was given with a view to ensure the happiness of the governed.