Patrick Henry, one of the founding fathers of the United States was a man that has some amazing quotes and has written some very powerful writings.
One of his quotes

"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."

A lot of people will use the term "I have the constitutional rights" or "they have the constitutional right to..". Technically that is false, nobody has a constitutional right to anything. The constitution was put in place not do define what the rights of the people have,but what the Government cannot do. Government uses delegated power, and that power comes from the people. Government just does not invent what it can and cannot do, the power had to come from somewhere.
By reading the federalist and the anti-federalist papers, this becomes very evident. As Thomas Jefferson said "I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That "all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people." [X Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition."

I know the title of this post says Patrick Henry and his quotes, and yet I quoted Thomas Jefferson, it helps illustrates the point that Patrick Henry makes.
Another really good quote that he has is "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past." What this quote is saying is that history always repeats itself. If you want to see what the future holds, just look into the past as governments and people will keep making the same mistakes that past generations had made. As Edmund Burke wrote "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."




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