Quotes About Constitution

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

All the perplexities, confusions, and distresses in America arise, not from defects in their constitution or confederation, nor from want of honor or virtue, as much from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.

A government of laws, and not of men

The Constitution guarantees free speech, but it doesn't guarantee listeners.

[America is] a rebellious nation. Our whole history is treason; our blood was attained before we were born; our creeds were infidelity to the mother church; our constitution treason to our fatherland.

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize.

Our Constitution is the envy of the world, as it should be for it is the grand design of the finest nation on earth.

When I die, I desire no better winding sheet than the Stars and Stripes, and no softer pillow than the Constitution of my country.

Let it be borne on the flag under which we rally in every exigency, that we have one country, one constitution, one destiny.

The government of the United States is and always has been a lawyer's government.

I am more of a constitutionalist libertarian.

The Republican abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who had once denounced the founding as a hideous compromise with slavery, came to understand the accomplishment of the framers. "Abolish slavery tomorrow," he said, "and not a sentence or syllable of the Constitution needs to be altered.

Jackson read the Indian treaties in much the same way that Democrats and progressives today read the U.S. Constitution. They care little about what it says; they interpret it to mean what they want it to mean. Jackson

we now have a Leviathan state, far from the limited government the Founders envisioned.

The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.

Money bought access. But the Second American Revolution had happened, people began taking the Constitution seriously again, and the practice of renting and buying congressmen had been stopped by the simple expedient of getting money out of the campaigns. Contributions of all types became illegal. Campaigns were funded by the voters. You gave money to a politician, it constituted bribery, and you could go to jail.

Curso de Direito Constitucional

Our forefathers got it they got it, man. They took godly principles and they put them into action, and they developed our Constitution - the land of freedom where each man is accountable and responsible for his actions.

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.

Previous to the war, there were some grounds for saying that—in theory, at least, if not in practice—our government was a free one; that it rested on consent. But nothing of that kind can be said now, if the principle on which the war was carried on by the North, is irrevocably established. If that principle be not the principle of the Constitution, the fact should be known. If it be the principle of the Constitution, the Constitution itself should be at once overthrown.

It is plain, therefore, that if, when the Constitution says treason, it means treason—treason in fact, and nothing else—there is no ground at all for pretending that the Southern people have committed that crime. But if, on the other hand, when the Constitution says treason, it means what the Czar and the Kaiser mean by treason, then our government is, in principle, no better than theirs; and has no claim whatever to be considered a free government.

Democracy is not only a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity. . . . I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth.

In a true democracy, leaders respect the will of the majority but also the rights of the minority—one without the other is not enough. This means that constitutional protections for the individual must be defended, even when those protections become inconvenient to the party on top.

History has been unkind to timid presidents. It has been downright cruel to those who think themselves above the Constitution.