“We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed”

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty, than those attending too small a degree of it.

Then it is important to strengthen the state governments: and as this cannot be done by any change in the federal constitution…it must be done by the states themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the general
government.

— Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Stuart, on the need to defend States’ Rights against the Federal government