"No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall to soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country."

"Give [judges] the powers and the independence now contended for and... your government becomes a despotism and they become your rulers. They are to decide upon the lives, the liberties, and the property of your citizens; they have an absolute veto upon your laws by declaring them null and void at pleasure; they are to introduce at will the laws of foreign country... after being clothed with this arbitrary power, they are beyond the control of the nation. ... If all this be true - if this doctrine be established in the extent which is now contended for - the Constitution is not worth the time we are now spending on it. It is - as it has been called by it's enemies - mere parchment. For these judges, thus rendered omnipotent, may overleap the Constitution and trample on your laws."

-Joseph Nicholson
 early member of Congress

"The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity"

-Henry Clay  

"For myself, therefore, I desire to declare that the principle that will govern me in the high duty to which my country call me is a adherence to the letter and spirit of the Constitution as it was designed by those who framed it."

-Martin Van Buren 

"Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny."

-Daniel Webster 

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men."

-Samuel Adams 

"To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race."

- Calvin Coolidge