"These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments and have proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and for its preservation."
Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"When, in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States."
Henry David Thoreau, 1854

"Town Meeting may have developed from the Yankee frame of mind, or the Yankee may have developed from Town Meeting. But they go together like pork and beans and one explains the other."
John Gould, 1940