Quotes About Constitutional

No Congress ever has seen fit to amend the Constitution to address any issue related to marriage. No Constitutional Amendment was needed to ban polygamy or bigamy, nor was a Constitutional Amendment needed to set a uniform age of majority to ban child marriages.

In bad or corrupted natures the body will often appear to rule over the soul, because they are in an evil and unnatural condition. At all events we may firstly observe in living creatures both a despotical and a constitutional rule; for the soul rules the body with a despotical rule, whereas the intellect rules the appetites with a constitutional and royal rule. And it is clear that the rule of the soul over the body, and of the mind and the rational element over the passionate, is natural and expedient; whereas the equality of the two or the rule of the inferior is always hurtful.

There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after work and drew up a Social Contract to form the state. But nobody has been able to find an actual record of it. Practically all the governments whose origins are historically established were the result of conquest-of one tribe by another, one city by another, one people by another. Of course there have been constitutional conventions, but they merely changed the working rules of governments already in being.

One question we must consider today is how we can take action to unify our nation, heal racial division, end poverty and give real-life meaning to the constitutional mandate that there be equal protection under law.

The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it.

Antigun advocates have always faced an uphill battle in this country. Americans have, to begin with, a constitutional right to gun ownership. Today, half of American households exercise this right, owning a total of about 250 million guns; and over 99 percent of those households do so in a responsible manner. To fight for major restrictions on an item that plays such a valued part in the lives of so many people looks like a nearly impossible task. So if you're really committed to the effort, and you want to win, what do you do? Simple: You lie.

I think that if we get back to some basic fundamental principles, we can make sure that we resolve the issues. And I think that that's what the Tea Party was all about. It's getting back to a constitutional conservative government. And that is limited, but it's also effective and efficient. I think that that's what we'll be able to do.

Here is a good bill that's needed in America. If it's unconstitutional, let the U.S. Supreme Court reverse its opinion and get in line with New Hampshire and that will make it constitutional.

Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.

We can only undo the election if the behavior meets the constitutional standard of subverting and threatening our system of government.

A constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages.

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands: we have a check upon two branches of the legislature, as each branch has upon the other two; the power I mean of electing at stated periods, one branch, which branch has the power of electing another. It becomes necessary to every subject then, to be in some degree a statesman: and to examine and judge for himself of the tendencies of political principles and measures.

Even if drugs are fully as destructive as they are usually claimed to be, it is morally wrong and demonstrably more destructive for government to deprive people of their unalienable, individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to make an utter mess of their own lives. Since human beings are inclined to learn more from the mistakes they make, rather than from their triumphs, the right to fail, for individuals and groups alike, may be even more important than the right to succeed, and it must be fiercely protected at almost any cost.

Let us face reality. The framers (of the Constitution) have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages frail bridges(or) tinkering. If we are to turn the founders upside down we must directly confront the Constitutional structure they erected.

No power but Congress can declare war; but what is the value of this constitutional provision, if the President of his own authority may make such military movements as must bring on war? ... [T]hese remarks originate purely in a desire to maintain the powers of government as they are established by the Constitution between the different departments, and hope that, whether we have conquests or no conquests, war or no war, peace or no peace, we shall yet preserve, in its integrity and strength, the Constitution of the United States.

Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response.

If the constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to mean anything, it must, as a general matter, permit a person to possess, carry and sometimes conceal arms to maintain the security of his private residence or privately operated business.

It is each American's constitutional right to marry the person they love, no matter what state they inhabit. No state should decide who can marry and who cannot. Thanks to the tireless work of so many, someday soon this discrimination will end and every American will be able to enjoy their equal right to marriage.

My judgment is that neither House of Congress, nor both combined, have any right to interfere in the count. It is for the Vice-President to do it all.... There should be no compromise of our Constitutional rights.

The more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people become about preserving their constitutional rights.

Some people don't mind a little constitutional sophistry in a good cause; and for liberals, centralizing all power in the federal government is always a good cause. Since most Americans don't know or care what the Constitution says, let alone what their ancestors thought it meant, the great liberal snow job has been very successful.

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court ruled President Obama's healthcare mandate is constitutional. This is a major victory for President Obama, who spent three years promoting it, and a major setback for Mitt Romney, who spent three years creating it.

I expect to see the day when the Elders of Israel will protect and sustain civil and religious liberty and every Constitutional right bequeathed to us by our fathers, and spread these rights abroad in connection with the Gospel for the salvation of all nations. I shall see this whether I live or die.

Lawyers from the NSA, as well as the UK's GCHQ, work very hard to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers.

The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government.

Obama might think of himself as one, but he is not a dictator. We are not a banana republic yet. This is not an authoritarian form of government. This is a constitutional republic, and the president doesn't allow or disallow. The president can't buy or purchase.

The cause of the South was the cause of constitutional government, the cause of government regulated by law, and the cause of honesty and fidelity in public servants. No nobler cause did man ever fight for!

[A] re-elected McConnell, with a Republican majority, would, he says, emulate his model of majority leadership - the 16 years under a Democrat, Montana'€™s Mike Mansfield. He, like McConnell, had a low emotional metabolism but a subtle sense of the Senate's singular role in the nation's constitutional equilibrium.

The propriety of a law, in a constitutional light, must always be determined by the nature of the powers upon which it is founded.

When a legislature undertakes to proscribe the exercise of a citizen's constitutional right to free speech, it acts lawlessly; and the citizen can take matters into his own hands and proceed on the basis that such a law is no law at all.

... large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark.

Of course same sex marriage is constitutional! The right to be yourself, to pursue life, liberty, and property, is protected several ways over several amendments. John Boehner should know this.

Let us teach our people again to be proud that they are Filipinos. Let us teach them to realize anew that being a Filipino means having as rich and noble a heritage of language, culture, patriotism and heroic deeds as any nation on earth. Let us teach a steadfast faith in Divine Providence, a stable family institution, the unhampered enjoyment of civil liberties, the advantages of constitutional government, the potentials of a rich and spacious land.

I oppose a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.

Since it is proposed to regard chemical reactions as electrical transactions in which reagents act by reason of a constitutional affinity either for electrons or for atomic nuclei, it is important to be able to recognize which type of reactivity any given reagent exhibits.

The veto is a President's Constitutional right, given to him by the drafters of the Constitution because they wanted it as a checkagainst irresponsible Congressional action. The veto forces Congress to take another look at legislation that has been passed. I think this is a responsible tool for a president of the United States, and I have sought to use it responsibly.

It’s unlikely to change – there’s nothing in King Salman’s past as governor of Riyadh for about forty years that suggests that he was particularly a reformer, not on the role of women, not on democratic development. There’s been a rumor in the last couple of days that he said to someone in an e-mail that he’s in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but I would be surprised if the level of repression started to go down … I think the kind of thing that we would view as significant reforms is unlikely.

It was outrageous that [Donald Trump] would be advocating [that] women who exercise their constitutional right and have autonomy over their healthcare decisions would be criminals, along with the doctors that served them. He did try to walk it back - I think pretty unconvincingly.

Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite.

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no dis-advantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage.

Declarations of war have never been a constitutional requirement for military action abroad.

I was taught to read by my grandmother. Central to her method was a tale of unnatural love called 'The Duck and the Kangaroo'. Then, because my grandfather, Senator Gore, was blind, I was required early on to read grown-up books to him, mostly constitutional law and, of course, the Congressional Record. The later continence of my style is a miracle, considering those years of piping the additional remarks of Mr. Borah of Idaho.

The traditional religious right's failure to restore public-school prayer or pass an antiabortion constitutional amendment has likely helped fuel the spread of the more extreme dominionist school.

Blessed be the memory of those few brethren who contended so strenuously for their constitutional rights and religious freedom, against such an overwhelming force of desperadoes!

I think what Republicans want is someone who will stand up and lead, who will take on the great challenges of the day, who will make the case that the path we're on isn't working; that the Obama-economy is a disaster, that Obamacare is a trainwreck, that our constitutional rights are under assault and that we need to restore America's leadership in the world.

We need a strong, bold constitutional conservative who won't back down and who will fight for the values we believe in. That's what we need for our nominee, whether it is me or whether it is someone else.

People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation - much like building a mosque at Ground Zero.