Calvin Coolidge Comments: "To support the Constitution, to observe the laws is to be true to our own higher nature."

"To support the Constitution, to observe the laws, is to be true to our own higher nature. That is the path, and the only path towards liberty. To resist them and violate them is to become enemies to ourselves  and instruments of our own destruction. That is the path towards servitude."

Foundations of the Republic - Address to the Holy Name Society, Washington, D.C. 9/21/24 - "Foundations of the Republic" p 108

 "A police force administered on the assumption that the violation of some laws may be ignored has started toward demoralization. The community which approves such administration is making dangerous concessions...The conclusion is inescapable that laxity of administration reacts upon public opinion, causing cynicism and loss of confidence in both law and its enforcement and, therefore in its observance."

From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York, Sunday, May 31, 1925

Calvin Coolidge Comments: On the Need to Decentralize the Federal Government

"No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people. Being irresponsible they become autocratic, and being autocratic they resist all development. Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy. It is the one element in our institutions that sets up the pretense of having authority over everybody and being responsible to nobody." - From: Calvin Coolidge, Foundations of the Republic p 410-411