Popular quotes about Constitutional! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 32
Communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government, and it would be necessary to destroy our government before Communism could be set up in the United States....[Communism] even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live.
David O. McKayThere 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.
Henry HazlittThe Scalia seat is defense. We're not going to get any better than Justice Scalia. The best we can do is preserve constitutional victories like upholding the Second Amendment, like protecting religious liberty. But we're not going to get any better.
Ted CruzI do not espouse the unitarian position. President Clinton's assertion of directive authority over administration, more than President Reagan's assertion of a general supervisory authority, raises serious constitutional questions.
Elena KaganNo free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.
John Dickinson...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?
John Stuart MillPeople for the American Way says it has yet to find anyone who has made a stronger case against the proposed school prayer Constitutional amendment... What kind of prayer would we use?
Cal ThomasNo higher proof exists of the strength of popular government than, though the chosen of the people be struck down, his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain.
Chester A. ArthurWhether Canada ends up with one national government or two governments or 10 governments, the Canadian people will require less government no matter what the constitutional status or arrangement of any future country may be.
Stephen HarperAgain, a law may be both constitutional and expedient, and yet may be administered in an unjust and unfair way.
Abraham LincolnThe aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable ... The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this Treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.
Karel De GuchtOur democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.
Al GoreThe more that voting is glorified as a panacea, the more lackadaisical people become about preserving their constitutional rights.
James BovardOn this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage - to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea.
Antonin ScaliaI am encouraged President Obama now says he will fulfill his constitutional obligation to seek authorization for any potential military action in Syria. This is the most important decision any President or any Senator must make, and it deserves vigorous debate
Rand PaulUganda's Constitutional Court will decide whether the military court can proceed with this trial. A nation cannot claim to be operating under the rule of law if its military tribunals ignore the orders of civilian courts.
Bill VaughanFor thirty years, beginning with the invention of a privacy right in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Left has been waging a systematic assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation.
David HorowitzThe only constitutional exception to the power of making treaties is, that it shall not change the Constitution.โฆ On natural principles, a treaty, which should manifestly betray or sacrifice primary interests of the state, would be null.
Alexander HamiltonWithout a free press there can be no free society. That is axiomatic. However, freedom of the press is not an end in itself but a means to the end of a free society. The scope and nature of the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of the press are to be viewed and applied in that light.
Felix FrankfurterIt's one thing to maintain that upper-income earners should pay higher tax rates because they are better able to shoulder the burden for essential government services. But it's constitutional blasphemy to claim that the tax code should be used as a weapon against the wealthy and that the state should be the tyrannical arbiter of how income is distributed.
David LimbaughWe must not allow the liberals to move us away from the conservative values of the American past which sustain our present and shall secure our future. As for me and my family, we will serve God, we will serve this constitutional republic, we will serve America.
Allen WestWhen the President of the United States attacks a movie star it is undignified and it casts a poor light on the United States of America. When the President of the United States attacks a sitting judge and questions his legitimacy, that actually can lead to a Constitutional crisis.
Mika BrzezinskiThe question is: how bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like.
Michael BadnarikThere are a lot of things that I really question - the legality of the drone strikes, these NSA revelations. Jimmy Carter came out and said we donโt live in a democracy. Thatโs a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, heโs got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.
Matt DamonFlag desecration is not a constitutional issue for the courts. It is a political one that belongs to the people.
Larry CraigEvery Latter-day Saint should sustain, honor, and obey the constitutional law of the land in which he lives.
Spencer W. KimballDemocracy is not just constitutional and legislative rules; it is a culture and practice and adhering by the law and respecting international human rights principles.
Hamad bin Isa Al KhalifaCan we say that the constitutional monarchies in Spain, Belgium or England are democratic? Those with superior chambers like the House of Lords in England, that still represent the English feudal nobility in terms of positions above regional representatives, who are in the end the representatives supposedly elected by the population. Many mechanisms exist, but they are mechanisms to preserve the power of the wealthy classes, of the bourgeois classes that hold the power and rights above the rest of the society.
Alejandro Castro EspinOur constitutional system is founded on democracy: the will of the people, not the unchecked rule of judges.
Mike DeWineFor me, the involvement of states in our national effort is not just because of their constitutional and legal responsibilities. It is also stems from a basic management principle. The chances of success are higher when we create a sense of participation for everyone; when we give everyone a stake in success.
Narendra Modi[T]he great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachment of the others.
James MadisonConstitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government.
Edwin MeeseToday 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.
William E. JennerThe president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation. As commander in chief, the president does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the president would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.
Barack ObamaThe Constitutional Convention debated whether America should even have a standing army. ... They worried that a powerful military could rival civilian government for power in our new country, and of course they worried that having a standing army around would create too much of a temptation to use it.
Rachel MaddowWhere mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.
Walter LippmannOne of the greatest disasters that happened to modern civilization was for democracy to inscribe "liberty" on its banners instead of "justice." Because "liberty" was considered the ideal it was not long until some men interpreted it as meaning "freedom from justice"; then when religion and decent government attempted to bring them back to justice, organized into "freedom groups" they protested that their constitutional and natural rights were being violated.
Fulton J. SheenIf it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him, when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law โ if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states โ then what is it?โฆ If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies โ even those who do not subscribe to our views โ as much constitutional rights as you concede yourself.
Lee Kuan YewThe Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights - the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.
Walter BagehotAlmost all of the liberal and Christian members of the constitutional commission have withdrawn, because we all fear that the Muslim Brotherhood will pass a document with Islamist undertones that marginalizes the rights of women and religious minorities. Who sits in this group? One person, who wants to ban music, because it's allegedly against Sharia law; another, who denies the Holocaust; another, who openly condemns democracy.
Mohamed ElBaradeiI'm a judge. It seemed to me that it was critical to try to take action to stem the criticism and help people understand that in the constitutional framework, it's terribly important not to have a system of retaliation against decisions people don't like.
Sandra Day O'ConnorDeclarations of war have never been a constitutional requirement for military action abroad. The United States has used force abroad more than 130 times, but has only declared war five times - the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II.
John YooUnder our [constitutional system] - either we're going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we're going to have to rethink our process of decision-making.
Newt GingrichRemember the referendum on the Charlottetown constitutional accord? The more Canada's political and business elites threatened Canadians that the country would disappear into a black hole if the accord weren't passed, the more Canadians opposed it.
Preston Manning