Edmund Morgan Quotes

The American people are rhetorically Jeffersonian and operationally Hamiltonian.

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

Limited government is best.

The American world had - seemingly, at least - become a Jeffersonian world by the election of 1800, which placed Thomas Jefferson in the presidency. Jefferson had been Hamilton's rival in the new government's early years, and Hamilton has figured in the public memory almost as much for that rivalry as for his positive achievements.

To restore America we need less Marx and more Madison.

The Democrats have come right out and said it: the power of the central government shall have no limits at all.

Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.

The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.

If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.

There was once in this country a man by the name of Thomas Jefferson, supposed to be a Democrat—a man whose principles and policies are not very prevalent among Democrats today.

The word conservative has become so loaded by people who are radical and don’t want to admit that they are radical.

James Madison was pessimistic about the country when he could not get accepted his proposal to allow the Congress to veto state laws.

The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was, democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither.

The idea that an overweening federal government is a threat to both freedom and equality (not to mention prosperity) goes back to Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry and some other fairly respectable personages. You can disagree with them, or with Coolidge or Reagan or Friedrich Hayek or Milton Friedman or George Will, but to dismiss them as nothing more than mouthpieces of the wealthy and big business is to indulge in [a] sort of anti-intellectualism…

The United States was famously founded as a government of limited powers; suspicion of concentrated private power has surged in periodic waves throughout its history.

We are in desperate need of a return to limited, constitutional government.

When the Constitution was written in 1787, there was this supposition that American politics would be above party. The people who would staff the positions in government would have the interests of the country, or at least their states and congressional districts, at heart, and so they wouldn't form permanent political parties.

We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot.

Particularly as a supposed 'conservative,' Trump ought to know something about the relationship between the federal government and the states.

I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.

Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.

Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.

I think Ron Paul's views are totally outside the mainstream of virtually every decent American.

I can't think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be.