Quotes About Constitution

even the best of constitutions need sometimes to be amended and improved, for after all there is but one constitution which is infallible, but one constitution that ought to be held sacred, and that is the human constitution.

A 'living constitution' is a dead constitution, because it does not do the one and only thing a written constitution is supposed to do: provide parameters around the power of officials.

The law, in this country, is dead. The Supreme Court doesn't follow the Constitution, Congress doesn't follow the Constitution. The President doesn't even want to follow the Constitution. And yet we're the ones called radical.

It [the Constitution] didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted.

I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag.

On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state, especially of the highest of all. The government is everywhere sovereign in the state, and the constitution is in fact the government.

If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.

Implementing parts of European constitution and leaving out others - without knowing where we're going - isn't an option. That would be detrimental to the overall balance, which is why we must embark on another comprehensive discussion of the issue once again. I would like to see Europe retain the idea of a constitution in the end, and I plan to campaign on its behalf.

The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution.

In Burma, our main goal in amending the constitution is not to phase out the military from politics. Our main point is to put the constitution in line with international standards and norms.

I feel that I'm sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Alabama, and those constitutions are founded upon a fundamental belief in God ... my display of the Ten Commandments and prayer before sessions are simply acknowledgments of God.

This country was taken into war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda's role with respect to Iraq, which there wasn't one at the time we went in. I want to state that Mr. Cheney must be held accountable. He is already ginning up a cause for war against Iran. Now, we have to stand for this Constitution, we have to protect and defend this Constitution.

I want to just obey the Constitution.The Constitution says only gold and silver can be legal tender.

Nowhere else in the Constitution does a "right" attributed to "the people" refer to anything other than an individual right. What is more, in all six other provisions of the Constitution that mention "the people," the term unambiguously refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset... The Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms... The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it "shall not be infringed."

The Constitution should contain a provision that every officer of the Government who should neglect or refuse to extend the protection guaranteed in the Constitution should be subject to capital punishment; and then the president of the United States would not say, "Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you."

What the framers of the Constitution tried to achieve when they wrote that Constitution back in the 1700s was an independent federal judiciary. They wanted federal judges to be appointed by the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, and to serve for good behavior.

I prefer a man who will burn the flag and then wrap himself in the constitution to a man who will burn the constitution and then wrap himself in the flag.

Our founding fathers detested the idea of a democracy and labored long to prevent America becoming one. Once again - the word 'democracy' does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, or the constitution of any of the fifty states. Not once. Furthermore, take a look at State of the Union speeches. You won't find the 'D' word uttered once until the Wilson years.

Our constitution, in short, is a judge-made constitution, and it bears on its face all the features, good and bad, of judge-made law.

All laws that are proper and correct, and all obligations entered into which are not violative of the constitution should be kept inviolate. But if they are violative of the constitution, then the compact between the rulers and the ruled is broken and the obligation ceases to be binding.

I am a constitutionalist. I believe in the constitution. I don't believe in altering the constitution.

The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.

You will see the constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread.... A terrible revolution will take place in the land of America.... [T]he land will be left without a Supreme Government,... [Mormonism] will have gathered strength, sending out Elders to gather the honest in heart... to stand by the Constitution of the United States.... In these days... God will set up a Kingdom, never to be thrown down.... [T]he whole of America will be made the Zion of God.

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror.

I remember George Mitchell - I was doing the Clarence Thomas hearing, and there were 48 senators declared they were not prepared to vote for him at the front end. We could have filibustered that and stopped it. George and I - George was the leader at the time - took the heat from every liberal group saying, "No, no, that's not the way the system is supposed to work, since the Constitution - the president shall propose and the Constitution shall dispose, we're going to let them hear this."

...[T]he Constitution conferred only a few specific powers on the federal government, all others being denied to it (as the Tenth Amendment would make plain). Unfortunately, only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population today - subtle logicians like you - can grasp such nuances. Too bad. The Constitution wasn't meant to be a brain-twister.

The human body contains blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. These are the things that make up its constitution and cause its pain and health. Health is primarily that state in which these constituent substances are in the correct proportion to each other, both in strength and quantity, and are well mixed.

The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

I'm a part of the GOP and let me tell you what my stance is. My stance is that, we the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society. It's not the government's job. You can read the Constitution all you want, it never says that it is the government's job and I think where we've gotten confused.

It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.

If congress has the right under the Constitution to issue paper money, it was given them to use themselves, not to be delegated to individuals or corporations.

The constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.

The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.

You know, the Constitution - there's nothing like it. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide as a country, OK? ... We're not gonna allow the people to come into our country. ... And if people want to come in, there's gonna be "Extreme vetting."

The Constitution. . . illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law--all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.

I think our society is fragmented. Messages regarding human sexuality have always been mixed in America. We are a schizophrenic nation. We were founded initially by Puritans, who escaped repression only to establish their own. Then the founding fathers gave us the Constitution to separate church and state. But the one thing that got left out of all those laws was human sexuality.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

Think of all that hard work our founding fathers put in - the revolutionizing, the three-fifths compromising, having to write the entire Constitution with a quill - and yet they neglected to include the right to vote.

The right of petition, I have said, was not conferred on the People by the Constitution, but was a pre-existing right, reserved by the People out of the grants of power made to Congress.

It will be the duty of the Executive, with sufficient appropriations for the purpose, to prosecute unsparingly all who have been engaged in depriving citizens of the rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution.

I am in favor, heartily in favor, of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and I owe my allegiance to my country at all times.

The Constitution: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.

A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.

Nothing is arbitrary, nothing is insulated in beauty. It depends forever on the necessary and the useful. The plumage of the bird, the mimic plumage of the insect, has a reason for its rich colors in the constitution of the animal. Fitness is so inseparable an accompaniment of beauty, that it, has been taken for it.