“The body politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals. It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.” – John Adams (as drafted for the preamble of the Massachusetts Constitution)

Gathering from greats such as John Adams, Machiavelli, Pascal, and others, we come to a list of quotes on the topic of constitutions and constitutional law that should serve as a guide to any Web3 community seeking to establish its own constitution. The quotes in the list below are organized by the subject’s date of birth. Let’s get to it!

Sun Tzu

“… too many punishments betray a condition of dire distress.” – Sun Tzu

Aristotle

“… justice exists only between men whose mutual relations are governed by law; and law exists for men between whom there is injustice… This is why we do not allow a man to rule, but law…” – Aristotle
“In all well-balanced governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune.” – Aristotle

Niccolo Machiavelli

“… the main foundations of any state, whether it be new, or old, or a new territory acquired by an old regime, are good laws and good armed forces.” – Niccolò Machiavelli

Jean Bodin

“… severity, though it is blameworthy, maintains the subject in obedience to the laws, and the sovereign who has instituted them.” – Jean Bodin

Thomas Hobbes

“… covenants, without the sword, are but words… in the differences of private men, to declare, what is equity, what is justice, and what is moral virtue, and to make them binding, there is need of the ordinances of sovereign power, and punishments to be ordained for such as shall break them…” – Thomas Hobbes
“To the care of the sovereign, belongeth the making of good laws… A good law is that, which is needful, for the good of the people, and withal perspicuous…Unnecessary laws are not good laws; but traps for money…” – Thomas Hobbes

Blaise Pascal

“Nothing is faultier than laws which put right faults.” – Blaise Pascal

John Locke

“No man in civil society can be exempted from the laws of it…” – John Locke
“And so whoever has the legislative or supreme power of any common-wealth is bound to govern by established standing laws, promulgated and known to the people, and not by extemporary decrees; by indifferent and upright judges, who are to decide controversies by those laws; and to employ the force of the community at home, only in execution of such laws, and secure the community from inroads and invasion. And all this to be directed to no other end but the peace, safety, and public good of the people… The majority having the whole power of the community may employ that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy.” – John Locke

Montesquieu

“Laws should be so appropriate to the people for whom they are made that it is very unlikely that the laws of one nation can suit another.” – Montesquieu
“… the people alone should make laws.” – Montesquieu
“All would be lost if the same man or the same body of principal men… exercised these three powers: that of making the laws, that of executing public resolutions, and that of judging the crimes or the disputes of individuals.” – Montesquieu
“… atrocity in the laws prevents their execution. When the penalty is excessive, one is often obliged to prefer impunity… When there is no difference in the penalty, there must be some difference in the expectation of pardon… ” – Montesquieu
“The law that determines the way ballots are cast is [a] fundamental law… When the people cast votes, their votes should no doubt be public…” – Montesquieu
“… judgements should be fixed to such a degree that they are never anything but a precise text of the law.” – Montesquieu
“Laws are established, mores are inspired… the laws [are] the particular and precise institutions of the legislator and the mores and manners, the institutions of the nation in general… while laws regulate the actions of the citizen, mores regulate the actions of the man… When a people have good mores, laws become simple… laws follow mores… [and] civil laws should aim principally to make good citizens of men… In republics [citizens] are free[d] by the laws and captured by the mores…” – Montesquieu
“It is the triumph of liberty when criminal laws draw each penalty from the particular nature of the crime. All arbitrariness ends, the penalty does not ensue from the legislator’s capriciousness but from the nature of the trying, and man does not do violence to man.” – Montesquieu
“There are four sorts of crimes. Those of the first kind run counter to religion; those of the second, to mores; those of the third, to tranquility; those of the fourth, to the security of the citizens. The penalties inflicted should derive from the nature of each of these kinds.” – Montesquieu
“… useless laws weaken necessary laws [and] laws that cause what is indifferent to be regarded as necessary have the drawback of causing what is necessary to be considered as indifferent… Every penalty that does not derive from necessity is tyrannical.” – Montesquieu
“When exceptions, limitations, modifications, are not necessary in a law, it is much better not to include them in it. Such details plunge one into new details… The style of the law should be simple; direct expression is always better understood than indirect… The laws should not be subtle; they are made for people of middling understanding; they are not an art of logic but the simple reasoning of a father of the family… There must be a certain candor in the laws. Made to punish the wickedness of men, they should have the greatest innocence themselves.” – Montesquieu

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“The power of the laws depends even more on their own wisdom than on the severity of their ministers, and the public will draws its greatest weight from the reason which dictated it.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“The more you multiply the laws, the more contemptible you make them…” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“… the law does not prescribe magnificence for anyone, and the proprieties are never grounds for going against right.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Adam Smith

“According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and, thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain.” – Adam Smith

Immanuel Kant

“… laws are possible only in relation to the freedom of the will; but on the presupposition of freedom they are necessary or, conversely, freedom is necessary because those laws are necessary, as practical postulates.” – Immanuel Kant
“A civil constitution, though its realization is subjectively contingent, is still objectively necessary, that is, necessary as a duty.” – Immanuel Kant

The Federalist Papers

“A constitution is… a fundamental law.” – The Federalist Papers
“Government implies the power of making laws.” – The Federalist Papers
“The establishment of a Constitution, in time of profound peace, by the voluntary consent of a whole people, is a prodigy.” – The Federalist Papers
“It is essential to the idea of a law, that it be attended with a sanction; or, in other words, a penalty or punishment for disobedience.” – The Federalist Papers

Why Constitutions Matter

“Governing a country involves… the enforcement of laws. This task, in turn, contains the obligations of making the laws known to people, of supervising people’s conduct, including obedience to … laws, and of reacting when laws are broken.” – Why Constitutions Matter
“If the constitution could be changeable by simple majority decisions, the constraints would be too weak… To make… constraints strong, one must make them more fixed than the majority decision… Constitutional constraints must be justifiable and difficult to change, yet flexible. We need constraints but we also need a non-arbitrary way to create, limit and change them.” – Why Constitutions Matter
“A constitution is the institutionalized cure for chronic [ignorance]; it disempowers short-sighted majorities in the name of binding norms…” – Why Constitutions Matter
“Constitutional structure and strategy must be informed, first, by a definition of those patterns of outcomes that are deemed undesirable and, second, by an implementation of limits on the procedures or results designed to forestall such patterns.” – Why Constitutions Matter
“… the constitution[‘s]… most fundamental function [is] to create an abstract framework, in which institutions are changed expediently, and peacefully, maintaining order in the process… Constitutions are sets of overriding, durable rules, frequently of an abstract, general character… a constitution is a collection of meta-rules, i.e., rules about other rules…” – Why Constitutions Matter
“To facilitate democratic deliberation, we need both strong courts and strong legal dogmatics (in other words, legal doctrine, scientia juris)… The work of legal dogmatics is almost always value-laden… In brief, legal dogmatics… works on a high level of abstraction[,] creates a system of beliefs[,] has normative components [and] aims at obtaining a coherent totality. It aims at presenting the law as a net of principles, rules, meta-rules and exceptions, at different levels of abstraction, connected by support relations.” – Why Constitutions Matter
“… laws are public goods…” – Why Constitutions Matter

The Constitution & Its Fundamental Components

“A constitution ought to enable the passage of legislation and implementation of public policies, but it should not determine what that legislation or those policies ought to be.” – The Constitution & Its Fundamental Components
“Through a constitution it is possible to establish a working structure of government, and through a constitution it is possible to establish the basic rights of citizens by placing limitations and obligations on that government’s powers.” – The Constitution & Its Fundamental Components
“The purpose of a constitution is to maintain boundaries, to protect the rule of law, to ensure the stability without which no economy can function, and to assure citizens that change will not take away their rights and liberties.” – The Constitution & Its Fundamental Components

Frederic Bastiat

“The law is the [collective] organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberty, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.” – Frederic Bastiat
“The mission of the law is… to protect persons and property.” – Frederic Bastiat
“… the purpose of the law is to prevent injustice from reigning… In short, law is justice… – simple and clear, precise and bounded. Every eye can see it, and every mind can grasp it; for justice is measurable, immutable, and unchangeable. Justice is neither more than this nor less than this.” – Frederic Bastiat
“… law… could not organize labor, education, and religion without destroying justice… Since law necessarily requires the support of force, its lawful domain is only in the areas where the use of force is necessary.” – Frederic Bastiat

Alexis de Tocqueville

“… make authority great and the official small, so that society might continue to be well regulated and remain free.”- Alexis de Tocqueville

John Stuart Mill

“… liberty is often granted where it should be withheld, as well as withheld where it should be granted… ideas of liberty… bend so easily to real infringements of the freedom of the individual…” – John Stuart Mill

Emile Durkheim

“… [the] real function [of punishment] is to maintain inviolate the cohesion of society by sustaining the common consciousness in all its vigor… It is a sign indicating that the sentiments of the collectivity are still collective, that the communion of minds sharing the same faith remains absolute… Without this necessary act of satisfaction what is called the moral consciousness could not be preserved.” – Émile Durkheim
“… the relationships that are regulated by cooperative law, with its restitutive sanctions, and the solidarity these relationships express, result from the social division of labor.” – Émile Durkheim

Max Weber

“… the validity of law, presupposing, as we have seen, the existence of an enforcement machinery, is necessarily a corollary of organizational action… In this sense the organization may be said to be the ‘sustainer’ of the law.” – Max Weber
“Law can… function in such a manner that… the prevailing norms controlling the operation of the coercive apparatus have such a structure as to induce, in their turn, the emergence of certain economic relations which may be either a certain order of economic control or a certain agreement based on economic expectations.” – Max Weber
“… the basic functions of the ‘state’ are: the enactment of law (legislative function); the protection of personal safety and public order (police); the protection of vested rights (administration of justice); the cultivation of hygienic, educational, social-welfare, and other cultural interests (the various branches of administration); and, last but not least, the organized armed protection against outside attack (military administration).” – Max Weber
“The constitution of an organization is the empirically existing probability, varying in extent, kind, and condition, that rules imposed by the leadership will be acceded to.” – Max Weber

Gulick & Urwick

“Many of the measures of a government must, of necessity, be negations and prohibitions.” – Gulick & Urwick

Bertrand de Jouvenel

“I regard it as the essential function of the sovereign to ensure the reliability of the individual’s environment… the social universe must be at the same time fluid, responsive to new initiatives, and a solid ground to which the individual may trust… this task of adjustment and stabilisation is the essential duty of the sovereign…” – Bertrand de Jouvenel

John Rawls

“… liberty is a certain structure of institutions, a certain system of public rules defining rights and duties… any liberty can be explained by a reference to three items: the agents who are free, the restrictions or limitations which they are free from, and what it is that they are free to do or not to do.” – John Rawls
“… there is no offense without a law…” – John Rawls
“… the basic structure [of the constitution] contains the distinctions and hierarchies of political, economic, and social forms which are necessary for efficient and mutually beneficial social cooperation… a just constitution sets up a form of fair rivalry for political office and authority… the constitution is the foundation of the social structure, the highest-order system of rules that regulates and controls other institutions.” – John Rawls
“A constitution that restricts majority rule by the various traditional devices is thought to lead to a more just body of legislation.” – John Rawls

Vincent Ostrom

“Laws depend on mechanisms for enforcement to become effective.” – Vincent Ostrom
“Perfection in the hierarchical ordering of a professionally trained public service provides the structural conditions necessary for ‘good’ administration… Administration is an invariant relationship in all systems of government…” – Vincent Ostrom
“Popular control over government is ineffective… The more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes…” – Vincent Ostrom
“The task in fashioning a system of democratic administration is how to restrict the power of command to a minimum and substitute structures of economic, political, and judicial control rather than relying on a single overreaching bureaucracy to coordinate all human efforts.” – Vincent Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom

“The processes of appropriation, provision, monitoring, and enforcement occur at the operational level. The processes of policy-making, management, and adjudication of policy decisions occur at the collective-choice level. Formulation, governance, adjudication, and modification of constitutional decisions occur at the institutional level.” – Elinor Ostrom
“Without monitoring, there can be no credible commitment; without credible commitment, there is no reason to propose new rules… In robust institutions, monitoring and sanctioning are undertaken not by external authorities but by the participants themselves [and] personal rewards for doing a good job are given to appropriators who monitor. The individual who finds a rule-infractor gains status and prestige for being a good protector of the commons.” – Elinor Ostrom

Robert Putnam

“… ensure compliance with the collectively desirable behavior. Social norms and the networks that enforce them provide such a mechanism.” – Robert Putnam

Francis Fukuyama

“… the reduction of trust in a society will require a more intrusive, rule-making government to regulate social relations.” – Francis Fukuyama
“From an economic standpoint, there are certain clear advantages to being able to operate in a relatively rule-free environment… There is usually an inverse relationship between rules and trust: the more people depend on rules to regulate their interactions, the less they trust each other and vice versa.” – Francis Fukuyama
“… people who do not trust one another will end up cooperating only under a system of formal rules and regulations, which has to be negotiated, agreed to, litigated, and enforced, sometimes by coercive means. This legal apparatus, serving as a substitute for trust, entails what economists call ‘transaction costs’. Widespread distrust in a society, in other words, imposes a kind of tax on all forms of economic activity, a tax that high-trust societies do not have to pay.” – Francis Fukuyama

Final Thoughts

What emerges from these diverse voices is not merely a historical record, but a living conversation about the fundamental challenge of human cooperation: how do we create systems that balance freedom with order, individual rights with collective needs, and flexibility with stability? The art of constitutional crafting lies in finding that delicate equilibrium where laws are strong enough to bind but not so rigid as to break.

Perhaps most relevant to our digital age is Fukuyama’s observation about the inverse relationship between rules and trust. In decentralized systems where trust is algorithmically enforced, we must ask: are we building systems that cultivate genuine human trust, or are we merely creating ever more sophisticated “legal apparatus” that serves as an expensive substitute for it? The transaction costs of distrust, as Fukuyama notes, represent a tax on all economic activity—a tax that high-trust societies need not pay.

The true test of any constitution, whether for a nation-state or a DAO, lies not in its elegance on paper but in its ability to create what Bertrand de Jouvenel called a social universe that is “at the same time fluid, responsive to new initiatives, and a solid ground to which the individual may trust.” In this collection of quotes, we find not a blueprint but a compass—pointing us toward governance systems that honor both our need for security and our aspiration for freedom.

Thanks for reading!