“The Labour Party should oppose the Government arms plan root and branch.”

Madison's notes (31 May 1787) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_531.asp
1780s, The Debates in the Federal Convention (1787)
Context: Mr. MADISON considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government. He observed that in some of the States one branch of the Legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors. That if the first branch of the general legislature should be elected by the State Legislatures, the second branch elected by the first-the Executive by the second together with the first; and other appointments again made for subordinate purposes by the Executive, the people would be lost sight of altogether; and the necessary sympathy between them and their rulers and officers, too little felt. He was an advocate for the policy of refining the popular appointments by successive filtrations, but though it might be pushed too far. He wished the expedient to be resorted to only in the appointment of the second branch of the Legislature, and in the Executive & judiciary branches of the Government. He thought too that the great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable, if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves, than if it should stand merely on the pillars of the Legislatures.

Speech to the Conservative Party conference http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/oct/07/conservatives2002.conservatives1 (07 October 2002)

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 11
Context: What we are after is the ROOT and not the branches. The root is the real knowledge; the branches are surface knowledge. Real knowledge breeds "body feel" and personal expression; surface knowledge breeds mechanical conditioning and imposing limitation and squelches creativity.

The Scotsman, 4 April 1997.
Asked whether he would intervene to prevent the Scottish Parliament from raising taxes.
1990s

Epilogue, p. 306.
The Tao of Physics (1975)

Speech in Woodford (12 October 1951), quoted in The Times (13 October 1951), p. 9
Post-war years (1945–1955)

134
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

Walden (1854)
Source: Walden, or Life in the Woods
Context: There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.<!--p.87

In an interview following her election as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2843875.ece, 10 November 2007.