Quotes About Constitution

Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution. It was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.

Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then "America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution." The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

"The Constitution" has something called The Emoluments Clause. That's just a fancy, 18th century word for no foreign government payments. And Donald Trump is collecting foreign government payments and other benefits throughout his business.It is a direct violation of "The Constitution" and unless he divests, not just operations, he must divest from all business interests or he will be in violation of "The Constitution" from day one.

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.

I acknowledge, in the ordinary course of government, that the exposition of the laws and Constitution devolves upon the judicial. But I beg to know upon what principle it can be contended that any one department draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the powers of the several departments.

I believe in the Constitution. I believe in separation of powers. I believe in the rule of law. I believe in limited government. And these are principles and policies that apparently neither the national Republican nor the national Democrat Party believes in. I believe great damage is being done to our Constitution, and I see no remedy at all, no likelihood of that changing, if we rely on the two parties to field our candidates for national office.

If we fulfill our responsibility to the Constitution, the Supreme Court will be filled with superior legal minds who will pursue the one agenda that our founding fathers intended in writing the Constitution: justice, rather than political or personal goals.

The Google guys haven't even found a way to put abortion in the Constitution yet. Give 'em time. Give the Google guys time and abortion will show up in a keyword search of the Constitution. It's not there yet. Second Amendment is.

I think [John Adams's] influence on the federal Constitution was indirect. Many including James Madison mocked the first volume of Adams's Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787. But his Massachusetts constitution was a model for those who thought about stable popular governments, with its separation of powers, its bicameral legislature, its independent judiciary, and its strong executive.

The Constitution, when it says, "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America," meant just what it said without reference to color or condition, ad infinitum.

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."

The Constitution exists precisely so that opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature, can be formed, tested, and expressed. What the Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Technology expands the capacity to choose; and it denies the potential of this revolution if we assume the Government is best positioned to make these choices for us.

If we set out with... a scrupulous regard to the Constitution, the government will acquire a spirit and a tone productive of permanent blessings to the community. If on the contrary,... the Constitution is slighted, or explained away, upon every frivolous pretext, the future of government will be feeble, distracted and arbitrary. The rights of the subjects will be the sport of every party vicissitude. There will be no settled rule of conduct, but everything will fluctuate with the alternate prevalency of contending factions.

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were all written by affluent white males, but to discuss them in any meaningful way, you have to bring in the roles of African Americans - the enslaved blacks - and the roles of women, who were scarcely acknowledged by those documents. You have to discuss why slavery wasn't outlawed by the Constitution, why women weren't given the votes. The Bill of Rights isn't about dead white males anymore, and it's not just about live white males either; it's about every minority group that exists.

They will sustain the constitution and laws and institutions of the United States, and be the champions of liberty and of that constitution when its integrity shall be threatened.

[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.

Upon the whole I doubt whether the Benefits of opposition to the Constitution opposition to the Constitution will not ultimately be productive of more good than evil; it has called forth, in its defence, abilities which would not perhaps have been otherwise exerted that have thrown a new light upon the science of government, It has given the rights of man a full and fair discussion, and explained them in so clear and forcible a manner, as cannot fail to make a lasting impression.

Is the appointment of Chaplains to the two Houses of Congress consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom? In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the U. S. forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion. The law appointing Chaplains establishes a religious worship for the national representatives, to be performed by Ministers of religion, elected by a majority of them, and these are to be paid out of the national taxes. Does this not involve the principle of a national establishment ... ?

When we got organized as a country, [and] wrote a fairly radical Constitution, with a radical Bill of Rights, giving radical amounts of freedom to Americans, it was assumed that Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly...When personal freedom is being abused, you have to move to limit it.

I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution, and I don't like it being shoved down my throat.

I believe that it is my duty and your duty to teach our children concerning this great God-inspired Constitution, this great law of liberty which he has given to this world, and which was never given before to any nation in any land. Never before has there been a representative government of this kind. Republics have been tried, hundreds of times, thousands of years ago, but never was there anything like this Government.

Preferring members of any one group for no reason other than race or ethnic origin is discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.

Nobody as of today can produce any oral or written statement from me talking about changing the constitution.

Study the Constitution. Let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislatures, and enforced in courts of justice.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.

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 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.

The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.

When it comes to the Supreme Court, the American people have only two times when they have any input into how our Constitution is interpreted and who will have the privilege to do so.First, we elect a president who has the power to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.Second, the people, acting through their representatives in the Senate, have their say on whether the president's nominee should in fact be confirmed.

The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy, and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal, and have done so for a very long time.... Respondent would have us announce, as the Court of Appeals did, a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy. This we are quite unwilling to do.

I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office - and by personal conviction - I am sworn to uphold that tradition.

The Constitution gives you the right to a lawyer, but it doesn't allow you the right to a good reputation.

Our plans protect freedom and opportunity, and our blueprint is the Constitution of the United States.

An Affront to the Rule of Law and to the Constitution Itself

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.

The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius.

I think I understand the Constitution a little bit because in 1971 we went off the gold standard under President Nixon into the Federal Reserve notes because we were a worldwide currency.

True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another.

I am a Republican because I believe in the constitution, strength in national defense, limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility as the concrete foundation for American government. They reinforce the resolve that the United States is the greatest country in the world and we can all be eternally grateful to our founding fathers for the beautiful legacy they left us today.

Under the constitution, as the Danish queen I am bound to the Lutheran faith, but that does not exclude people of other faiths.

I would not have suffered my name to have been used by my friends on anywise as President of the United States, or candidate for that office, if I and my friends could have had the privilege of enjoying our religious and civil rights as American citizens, even those rights which the Constitution guarantees unto all her citizens alike.

President Obama seems to understand the Constitution as a 'set of suggestions.'

From Watergate we learned what generations before us have known; our Constitution works. And during Watergate years it was interpreted again so as to reaffirm that no one - absolutely no one - is above the law.

The Constitution enjoins an oath upon all the officers of the United States. This is a direct appeal to that God Who is the avenger of perjury. Such an appeal to Him is a full acknowledgement of His being and providence.

EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.

I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church.