Quotes About Constitution

He suspended habeas corpus, arrested newspaper editors, jailed Northerners without hearings or trials, bypassed Congress, ignored the Supreme Court, and even arrested a member of Congress. He justified these violations as part of the Executive's War Powers and claimed that he violated the Constitution for the sole purpose of protecting it.

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

The Constitution itself, plainly written as it is, the safeguard of our federative compact, the offspring of concession and compromise, binding together in the bonds of peace and union this great and increasing family of free and independent States, will be the chart by which I shall be directed.

The nation, the Supreme Court has said, has "no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln." The

The happy Union of these States is a wonder their Constitution a miracle their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

The rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted.

What can be more reasonable than that when crowds of them [immigrants] come here, they should be forced to renounce everything contrary to the spirit of the Constitution[?]

I entirely concur in the propriety of restoring to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is a legitimate constitution. And, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable government.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

The character of such a government ought to secure, first, against foreign invasion; secondly, against dissensions between members of the Union, or seditions in particular States; thirdly, to procure to the several States various blessings of which an isolated situation was incapable; fourthly, it should be able to defend itself against encroachment; and fifthly, to be paramount to the State Constitutions.

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.

it was impossible to confine a Government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia

Upon the right constitution of checks all goodness of government depends.

An act against the Constitution is void; an act against natural equity is void.

Father of the Constitution," said: "The accumulation of all power – legislative, executive, and judiciary – in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.

it was not only the executive's right but his responsibility "to do whatever the needs of the people demand, unless the Constitution or the laws explicitly forbid him to do it.

tendency to substitute violence, murder, and lynching for the rule of law, the courts, and the Constitution.

Compromises based on the idea that the preservation of the Union is more important than the liberty of nearly 4,000,000 human beings cannot be right. The alteration of the Constitution to perpetuate slavery—the enforcement of a law to recapture a poor, suffering fugitive . . . these compromises cannot be approved by God or supported by good men.

He then took his listeners back to their common beginnings, to the founding of the nation, unraveling a narrative to demonstrate that when the Constitution was adopted, "the plain, unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity

The worsening context of the war, which threatened the survival of the Union and the Constitution itself, provided a suitable resolution to this dilemma.

Observing this widespread failure to rectify conditions, Roosevelt recalled, "I became more set than ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers, judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the Constitution a fetish for the prevention of the work of social reform.