States Rights Quotes

“Your right of religious freedom ends where my right of religious abstinence begins...”
― T. Rafael Cimino, Mid Ocean

“In examining the division of powers, as established by the Federal Constitution, remarking on the one hand the portion of sovereignty which has been reserved to the several States, and on the other, the share of power which has been given to the Union, it is evident that the Federal legislators entertained very clear and accurate notions respecting the centralization of government. The United States form not only a republic, but a confederation; yet the national authority is more centralized there than it was in several of the absolute monarchies of Europe....”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Elijah Muhammad himself has now been carrrying the same message for more than thirty years; he is not an overnight sensation, and we owe his ministry, I am told, to the fact that when he was a child of six or so, his father was lynched before his eyes. (So much for states' rights.)”
― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

“If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every state, county, and parish, and them out of the public treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of their children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union, they may undertake the regulation of all roads, other than post roads. In short everything from the highest object of state legislation down to the most minute object of police would be thrown under the power of Congress.”
― Madison, James

“… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people … are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government … whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”
― General Robert E. Lee

“To the early American his state government was at least on a par with the federal government in his esteem. Illustrative is the following incident:
President Washington was about to arrive at Boston on a visit, and Governor Hancock was perturbed over a matter of protocol; would he be compromising the dignity of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if he went to meet the “father of his country” on arrival, or would it be more proper that the President call at the state Capitol? The Governor finally settled the problem by pleading illness…. The sequel to that incident is worth noting. President Washington was asked to review the Massachusetts militia; he refused on the ground that the militia was the military arm of the state, not the federal government; after all, the tacit understanding in those days was that the militia might be called upon to face the federal army.”
― Frank Chodorov, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil

“If a separation of the states ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate and to sacrifice the interest of another.”
― H. W. Brands