Alexander Hamilton, The federalist n.70:
Men often oppose something simply because they had no initiative in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those they dislike. But if they have been consulted and have had the opportunity to disapprove, opposition becomes, in their opinion, an indispensable duty of self-respect. They seem to consider themselves obliged, for honor and for all the reasons of personal infallibility, to nullify the success of what has been decided contrary to their feelings.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Ideals and doubtsin Collected Legal Papers 303, 305 (1920), quoted in Michael Boudin’s review of a volume of letters by Louis Brandeis, 85 Yale LJ 591, 596 (1976):
[T]The way the inevitable comes about is through effort. . . . And although with Spinoza we may consider criticism of the past futile, there is every reason to do everything we can to make the future as we wish.