Popular quotes about Constitution! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 32
If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me, ... But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution.
John RobertsI don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.
Robert BorkI often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon law and upon courts. These are false hopes, believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no courts to save it.
Learned HandI 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.
Molly IvinsArticle I, Section 8, of the Constitution, of course, lays out the delegated, enumerated, and therefore limited powers of Congress. Only through a deliberate misreading of the general welfare and commerce clauses of the Constitution has the federal government been allowed to overreach its authority and extend its tendrils into every corner of civil society.
Ed CraneI 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.
James MadisonThe Second Amendment is in the Constitution to help citizens protect themselves from people like Senator Dianne Feinstein who would come along, and if they could determine what words you can and cannot say, where and where you can't say them. The Constitution is there to protect you from mayors like Mike Doomberg who wants to tell you how big your beverage can be.
Rush LimbaughThat's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism; it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things.
Antonin ScaliaWe current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.
William J. BrennanWhen I came here, I put my hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. I didn't put my hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.
Jesse JacksonAmerica's founders were clear that the Constitution established a federal government of few and defined powers. It cannot regulate any activity it chooses, but they only regulate in those areas which the Constitution grants it power to regulate.
Orrin HatchThe Constitution empowers the people to resolve our day's most contentious issues. When judges forget this basic truth, they do a disservice to our democracy and to our constitution.
Mike DeWineIf they are incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights.
James MadisonA constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
Thomas PaineThe example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the state, instead of assembling armies, will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had give them. The constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberation, is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.
Thomas JeffersonMake sure the government treats others the same as you would want the government to treat you. ...Once you consent to the government ignoring the Constitution, you deny yourself the protection of the Constitution.
Charley ReeseThe revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable.
Maximilien RobespierreThe first right of every human being is the right of self-defense. Without that right, all other rights are meaningless. The right of self-defense is not something the government bestows upon its citizens. It is an inalienable right, older than the Constitution itself. It existed prior to government and prior to the social contract of our Constitution.
Larry CraigWhile the president is to nominate that individual [to Supreme Court], we in the Senate must provide our advice and consent. This function is not well-defined. The Constitution does not set down a road map. It does not require hearings. In fact, it does not even require questioning on your understanding of the Constitution nor the role of the Supreme Court.
Mike DeWineNo great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
John Stuart MillIndividuals for whom no orthodox cure is available surely are entitled to select a health care approach.....This right (is) specifically within,,,the 1st, 4th, 5th, 9th, and 14th amendments to the (US) Constitution....To be insensitive to the very fundamental civil liberties....(:) the choice...of the person whose body is being ravaged (by disease), is to display slight understanding of the essence of our free society and its constitutional underpinnings.
Luther L. BohanonThe Supreme Court is about the Constitution. It is about constitutionality. It is about the law. At its bear simplest, it's about the law. It is not about the Democrat Party agenda. Because that's what it's become. The whole judiciary has become that because that's the kind of people they have put on various courts as judges, and every liberal justice on the Supreme Court is a social justice warrior first and a judge of the law second. And if they get one more, then they will have effectively corrupted the Supreme Court.
Rush LimbaughThose who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called civic virtue.
Dallin H. OaksI myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.
Kurt VonnegutThe 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.
Byron WhiteIt was during the eighteenth century - a period of boastful satisfaction with the nice balances within the English constitution - that Englishmen came to accept the Whig view of the utility of an armed citizenry. The armed citizen was not only affirmed to be protecting himself but, together with his fellows, provided the ultimate check on tyranny.
Joyce Lee MalcolmIn the name of the constitution of Texas, which has been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. I love Texas too well to bring civil strife and bloodshed upon her.
Sam HoustonThe woman movement is one which is uniting by co-operating influences, all the antagonisms that are warring on the family state. Spiritualism, free love, free divorce, the vicious indulgences consequent on unregulated civilization, the worldliness which tempts men and women to avoid large families, often by sinful methods, thus making the ignorant masses the chief supply of the future ruling majorities; and most powerful of all, the feeble constitution and poor health of women, causing them to dread maternity as--what it is fast becoming--an accumulation of mental and bodily tortures.
Catharine BeecherThe only relevant side is that of the law and the Constitution. We do great injury to the integrity of the court system when we start speaking of sides and stop devoting ourselves to the pursuit of impartial justice.
Jon KylLet's say tomorrow that there was a president, that we elected a president that eliminated the bulk collection of data. Let's just say it happened. What do you think would happen? People are like 'the sky would fall. We would be overrun with jihadists.' Maybe we could rely on the Constitution. Maybe we could get warrants. ... If you make the warrant specific, there's no limit to what you can get through a warrant.
Rand PaulIt is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt's and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.
William Howard TaftKarzai is Afghanistan's first democratically elected president. He brought the international community into partnership on an unprecedented level, and he championed a new constitution that is liberal, democratic and still very Afghan. All of that does reflect a vision. But he's presided over a country that is still in conflict, and he hasn't taken some of the difficult decisions his own government wanted him to take. On corruption, he hasn't been as decisive as he should've been. There are legitimate questions about him.
Chris AlexanderThe free exercise clause of the constitution does not apply to any religion but Christianity. [because none of the other religions are legitimate religions.].
Roy MooreA lot of people are talking about defunding planned parenthood, as if that's a huge game changer. I think it's time to do something even more bold. I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother's womb is a person at the moment of conception.
Mike HuckabeeThere are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.
Frank HerbertOur Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.
Richard Mentor JohnsonWe have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Our constitution was made for a moral and religious people... it is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
John Quincy AdamsWhen we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society. Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force.
Thomas JeffersonInternal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.
Dick ThornburghOne of the [Million Mom] marchers said 'the hands that rock the cradle rule this nation.' I thought, 'no Madame, the hands that rock the cradle rule our families and governments and corporations. The hands that wrote the Constitution rule this nation'.
Charlton HestonBe assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.
AeschinesAfter all, our Constitution was intended as a popular document. It was drafted and ratified by the people. It established democratic institutions. It entrusts the people with the power to make the tough decisions. And, in most cases, it prefers the will of the people to the unchecked rule of judges.
Mike DeWine