Related:

• The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be _tremendous and irresistable_.
  Who are the militia? _are they not ourselves_. Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms _each man against his own bosom_....
• It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood
  if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow....
• It is because the people are civilized, that they are with safety armed. -- Joel Barlow
• We should realize that a city is better off with bad law
  o long as they remain fixed, then with good laws that are constantly being altered, that the lack of learning combined with sound common sense is more helpful than the kind of cleverness that gets out of hand, and that as a general rule, states are better governed by the man in the street than by intellectuals....
• As a general rule, the freedom of any people can be judged by the volume of their laughter.
• Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority.
  It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions....
• It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood
  if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessane changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow....
• However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise.
  There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs....
• The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army.
  Their system was to make every man a soldier, and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country when ever that was reared....