Preston

“Liberty has never come from government,” Woodrow Wilson, one of FDR’s predecessors and another Democrat, said. “The history of liberty is the history of limitation of government’s power, not the increase of it.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“I have often wondered about a paradox in American government: Every four years, voters elect a president and in California a governor, the only officeholders elected by all the people; then, the same people in their individual districts turn around and elect a legislature and congress that is often controlled by the opposing party, enabling it to prevent the president or governor from carrying out the things they elected him or her to do.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“It reminded me of something that James Madison said in 1788: “Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
― Ronald Reagan, An American Life: An Enhanced eBook with CBS Video: The Autobiography

“Thomas Paine, who had a shrewd eye for military matters, was closer to the mark in a public letter to Admiral Howe published in early 1777. “In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in, you had only armies to contend with,” Paine observed. “In this case, you have both an army and a country to combat.”
― Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777