Quotes About Constitution

the Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.

And as John Adams told the Massachusetts militia in 1789, "Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." There

How did a movement that was defined by its belief in individual liberty and respect for the Constitution, free markets, personal responsibility, traditional values, and civility find itself embracing a stew of nativism, populism, and nationalism?

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice, should go a little farther, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labour to renew...

I pledged that as long as I am in a position to uphold the Constitution, no barrier would ever come between a secret ballot and the citizen's right to cast one... For this Nation to remain true to its principles, we cannot allow any American's vote to be denied, diluted, or defiled. The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.

[W]e need to build our democracy and our voting system on a rock, the rock of adding a Voting Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that applies to all states and all citizens.

Earlier today we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, "We, the people." It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the 17th of September in 1787 I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision I have finally been included in "We, the people."

No foreigner has a place asking another people, another country, to change their constitution.

Lafayette told the duke, as the latter read the document, "and I see the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect document in existence.

You forget the majesty of trade and the unparalleled virtues of the British Constitution which are all based on the sanity of the middle classes, combined with the diligence of the working-classes. You're

Abortion raises moral and spiritual questions over which honorable persons can disagree sincerely and profoundly. But those disagreements did not then and do not now relieve us of our duty to apply the Constitution faithfully.

Diversity yields strength. This is America's history and example. Indeed, diversity is our very creed, as is evident from the wording of our Constitution and its Amendments, from our persistent acknowledgment of the equality of persons, and from our accepting each other and profiting from our differences. To oppose it is to ignore and violate the American testament and its precious dream.

Each provision of the Constitution is important, and I cannot subscribe to a doctrine of unlimited absolutism for the First Amendment at the cost of downgrading other provisions.

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.

If there is one basic element in our Constitution, it is civilian control of the military.

Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.

Just because the power is out doesn't mean we unplug the constitution.

Our Constitution does not secure the peaceful transition of power, but rather presupposes it.

The country may have been called the "United States," but its thirteen members lived under thirteen different constitutions, 9 with thirteen different ways to value money, thirteen different rules of commerce, and thirteen views on how all the problems of the nation should be solved.

Even in the debates, so repellent was slavery to northerners—and so embarrassing to southerners—that when the subject came up, the delegates often danced around it, employing euphemisms, such as "this unique species of property" or "this unhappy class," as stand-ins for the more disagreeable "slaves." Thus, the words "slave" and "slavery" never appeared in the original Constitution, nor would they until ninety-one years later when the thirteenth amendment abolished the practice

Beard concluded that those who supported the Constitution did so because the new government would guarantee their wealth and the payment of debts owed to them, while those opposed wanted to stay with the more impotent and forgiving Articles of Confederation.

Constitutional Law is merely politics made incomprehensible to the common man.

In speaking of a constitution in cyberspace we are simply asking: What values should be protected there? What values should be built into the space to encourage what forms of life?

Liberty in cyberspace will not come from the absence of the state. Liberty there, as anywhere, will come from a state of a certain kind. We build a world where freedom can flourish not by removing from society any self-conscious control, but by setting it in a place where a particular kind of self-conscious control survives. We build liberty as our founders did, by setting society upon a certain constitution.