Constitutional Quotes

#1. 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.

Harry Browne

#2. There is nobody that I know who believes that Bank of America is a human being who should be entitled for the same constitutional rights that the people of our country are.

Bernie Sanders

#3. I have introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and make it clear that the Congress and state legislatures do have the ability and the power to regulate and get corporate funding out of political campaigns.

Bernie Sanders

#4. I see no constitutional problems with the identification, staving off and defusing of outside threats.

Thomas De Maiziere

#5. 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.

Henry Rollins

#6. Like psychoanalysis, constitutional jurisprudence has become a game without rules. By defying the plain meaning of words, ignoring context and history, and using a little ingenuity, you can make the Constitution mean anything you like.

Joseph Sobran

#7. There is a vast difference - a constitutional difference-between restrictions imposed by the state which prohibit the intellectual commingling of students, and the refusal of individuals to commingle where the state presents no such bar.

Frederick M. Vinson

#8. Our 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 Gore

#9. This can't be constitutional," he said. "This is America, damn it. We still have freedom of speech here.

Bentley Little

#10. States, virtually all of them, have a constitutional requirement to operate on a balanced budget.

John Kitzhaber

#11. Our constitutional ban on religious tests for public office is worth less to the non-religious than the sheepskin parchment it was written on was worth to the sheep.

Unknown

#12. I think we do need a Constitutional amendment to take the profit out of politics by imposing term limits.

Kenneth Eade

#13. We need a constitutional amendment to allow the legislature to control the so-called free speech rights of corporations.

Hank Johnson

#14. The priceless heritage of our society is the unrestricted constitutional right of each member to think as he will. Thought control is a copyright of totalitarianism, and we have no claim to it.

Robert H. Jackson

#15. I think that, as Americans, we should never forget that when we tamper with freedom of speech, it is a very sensitive issue that affects all of our constitutional rights and privileges.

Charles B. Rangel

#16. We believe in enjoying the constitutional privilege and right of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own consciences.

Joseph Smith Jr.

#17. The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

John Marshall

#18. Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate.

John L. Lewis

#19. I 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 Kagan

#20. The Truth about America's Silicon Valley-
Angels in the Silicon

Riveting and insightful regarding progressivism and the social upheavals living in the Silicon Valley.-

John Yoo, UC Berkeley Constitutional Lawyer, novelist, and public servant

Richard Theodor Kusiolek

#21. There's a misconception about Barack Obama as a former constitutional law professor. First of all, there are plenty of professors who are 'legal relativists.' They tend to view legal principles as relative to whatever they're trying to achieve.

Jonathan Turley

#22. Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

Che Guevara

#23. It would seem, therefore, that this constitutional safeguard may no longer serve its original purpose, especially when, as we learned last year, some acts of perjury may now be acceptable - in this world, at least, if not the next.

James L. Buckley

#24. The greatest threat to the constitutional right to vote is voter fraud.

Lynn Westmoreland

#25. Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North's successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms ... one man was the government of the United States ... Lincoln was a great dictator ... This great constitutional dictator was self appointed.

Clinton Rossiter

#26. Any reform of that fundamental nature, potentially constitutional, it has to go to the people. It has to be a be a referendum, and that's why it was a plebiscite in all of the provinces in which it's been attempted.

Rona Ambrose

#27. Genghis Khan decreed religious tolerance for all of his conquered peoples. So I think he definitely would approve of our constitutional protections of freedom of religion. I think he would also approve of the way the U.S. has been able to attract talented people from all over the world.

Amy Chua

#28. Suppose a state said that, Because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional?

Elena Kagan

#29. Our plan will not favor religious institutions over nonreligious institutions. As president, I'm interested in what is constitutional and I'm interested in what works.

George W. Bush

#30. I don't say women's rights - I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

#31. On August 28, 1933, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 6260, outlawing the constitutional right of U.S. citizens to own gold.

Michael Maloney

#32. As we've seen, our constitutional system requires limits on copyright as a way to assure that copyright holders do not too heavily influence the development and distribution of our culture.

Lawrence Lessig

#33. 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.

Hillary Clinton

#34. It is essential to the pure and peaceful administration of justice that all its officers keep carefully within the boundaries of their constitutional powers. Auxiliary to this, but not secondary in importance, is a due knowledge of the leading subjects for their inquiry and decision.

Levi Woodbury

#35. We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor.

John Engler

#36. From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

Noah Feldman

#37. The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility.

L. Neil Smith

#38. The Bill of Rights wasn't enacted to give us any rights. It was enacted so the Government could not take away from us any rights that we already had.

Kenneth Eade

#39. I don't think we'll solve the problem of the deficit until three things happen: We need more discipline on spending in Congress. We need a constitutional amendment requiring Congress to balance the budget. And we need to give our presidents a line-item veto.

Ronald Reagan

#40. I couldn't get to sleep until four in the morning. Nobody knew. You pick up the morning paper in Chicago, and it says, 'N.Y. at Detroit (n.).' I mean, doesn't a man have a Constitutional right to the box scores?

Roger Angell

#41. The State, every government whatever its form, character or color - be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik - is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

Emma Goldman

#42. There is nothing in our constitutional democracy that accepts that two of the richest people in the world can control our destiny.

Jane Mayer

#43. We are losing our living systems, social systems, cultural systems, governing systems, stability, and our constitutional health, and we're surrendering it all at the same time.

Paul Hawken

#44. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case.

Abraham Lincoln

#45. In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.

Walter Lippmann

#46. People have their constitutional right to contribute to a campaign and if they have discretionary money that they want to contribute to a candidate, whether a Republican or a Democrat, they should be able to do so.

Brian Sandoval

#47. The United States Supreme Court has voted 6-3 that voter photo ID is constitutional.

Bob Ehrlich

#48. What royal families are very good at doing is surviving and reinventing themselves. That's true whether it's a constitutional monarchy in Britain or an authoritarian monarchy.

Robert Lacey

#49. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.

Noah Webster

#50. 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.

Albert Bushnell Hart

#51. 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.

David Prosser Jr.

#52. The very idea of the law in a constitutional republic involves the requisite that it be a rule, a guide, uniform, fixed and equal, for all, till changed by the same high political power which made it. This is what entitles it to its sovereign weight.

Levi Woodbury

#53. Only by obedience to his genius; only by the freest activity in the way constitutional to him, does an angel seem to arise beforea man, and lead him by the hand out of all the wards of the prison.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#54. Sheriff Knezovich's bill was poorly-written and not constitutional, according to many attorneys, including myself, that reviewed it. We want to go forward with something that's going to stand up to the scrutiny that all bills go under once they've been passed into law.

Matt Shea

#55. Historically, the court has been the forum to which individuals can turn when they believed their constitutional rights were violated. This has been especially noteworthy in the arena of civil rights.

Dianne Feinstein

#56. He [Barack Obama] might have a pen, and he might have a phone, but what he does not have is the constitutional power to run this country like a dictator.

Barack Obama

#57. A law can be both economic folly and constitutional.

Antonin Scalia

#58. The basis on which the Good Friday agreement was constructed was in addressing those problems in the history of Northern Ireland, the social and constitutional problems as well as the military problems that have been unaddressed for centuries.

John Reid

#59. Absent scandal, a federal judge can serve for decades on the bench, underscoring the importance of appointing judges who have a proper understanding of their constitutional role.

Paul Weyrich

#60. If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.

Larry J. Sabato

#61. And what my constitutional values are are wholly irrelevant to the job, and so neither you nor anyone else will know what they are.

Elena Kagan

#62. The United States, after all, was founded by men of liberal sentiment who were seeking to promote the greatest good for the greatest number, by creating a constitutional order for the creation and expansion of liberty.

Douglas Massey

#63. If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.

Siraj Wahhaj

#64. It is ... particularly true of constitutional government that its atmosphere is opinion ... It does not remain fixed in any unchanging form, but grows with the growth and is altered with the change of the nation's needs and purposes.

Woodrow Wilson

#65. I went to Ferguson and walked with the demonstrators and saw this heavily armed police force, tactical units pointing sniper rifles at my constituents who were there exercising their constitutional rights.

William Lacy Clay Jr.

#66. Wartime always brings expansions of state power, together with erosions of moral and constitutional standards.

Joseph Sobran

#67. In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort.

Martin Van Buren

#68. We must always embrace individual liberty and enforce the constitutional rights of all Americans-rich and poor, immigrant and native, black and white.

Rand Paul

#69. REPARTEE, n. Prudent insult in retort. Practiced by gentlemen with a constitutional aversion to violence, but a strong disposition to offend. In a war of words, the tactics of the North American Indian.

Ambrose Bierce

#70. The transfer of power is always a test of the constitutional system, a test of its strength.

Vladimir Putin

#71. I confess to considerable doubts about the eventual stability of democracy, unless buttressed by constitutional safeguards and a general climate of opinion which thoroughly understands the case for liberty in general

Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins

#72. If it's lawful to have a rifle club to kill pheasants, it should be just as lawful to have one to kill wolves or dogs that are being sicked on little black babies. In fact, it's constitutional. Article Number Two of the constitution guarantees the right of every citizen to own a rifle or a shot gun.

Malcolm X

#73. The police have no right to do what they have been doing to the protesters. Their behavior has been designed to chill the protester's constitutional rights. This judge's ruling is wonderful.

James Lafferty

#74. Swimming in the U.K. is not really about enjoying a sultry experience. It's about cold, clear acts of purification, and constitutional durability. It's about invigoration and bravado.

Sarah Hall

#75. Nothing is more important in the preservation of peace than to secure among the great mass of the people living under constitutional government a just conception of the rights which their nation has against others and of the duties their nation owes to others.

Elihu Root

#76. There is a danger to judicial independence when people have no understanding of how the judiciary fits into the constitutional scheme.

David Souter

#77. I think that this liberal progressive agenda is not the thing that the American people want and it's antithesis to who we are as a constitutional republic.

Allen West

#78. In the criminal law [ ... ] imprisonment should be resorted to only after the most anxious consideration.

Pius Langa

#79. Hunger was constitutional with him,
women, cigarettes, liquor, need need need
until he went to pieces.
The pieces sat up & wrote. They did not heed
their piecedom but kept very quietly on
among the chaos.

John Berryman

#80. There is a difference between constitutional government and judicial dictatorship. And I think it's time we remembered that our Constitution was not put together in order to establish the sovereignty of the judges, it was framed in order to guarantee the sovereignty of the people.

Alan Keyes

#81. Censorship does not interfere with the constitutional rights of every American to sit alone in a dark room in the nude and cuss.

Pat Paulsen

#82. It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one.

Gloria Steinem

#83. The most innocent man's words will be used against him.

Kenneth Eade

#84. This is nothing new. We saw this with the Social Security Act, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act - constitutional challenges were brought to all three of these monumental pieces of legislation.

Stephanie Cutter

#85. The attempt to isolate economics from other disciplines-notably politics, history, philosophy, finance, constitutional theory and sociology-has fatally disabled its power to explain what is happening in the world.

Will Hutton

#86. I think you may see again a rise at the federal government level for a - a call for the federal constitutional amendment, because people want to make sure that this definition of marriage remains secure, because after all, the family is the fundamental unit of government.

Michele Bachmann

#87. The highest laws of the land (America) are not only the constitution and constitutional laws, but also contracts.

Hannah

#88. The Spain of today looks at the Second Republic with great appreciation and above all with satisfaction and pride for what we have been able to do in this constitutional age.

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

#89. I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.

Barack Obama

#90. politicians and pundits tell you what your rights are. Read this book to learn your constitutional rights and together, we can keep the spirit of freedom alive in this great nation. Click here to view this

Sean Patrick

#91. The citizens of the United States have peculiar motives to support the energy of their constitutional charters.

James Madison

#92. It is too disgusting to contemplate that a handful of men keep millions of women from being constitutional citizens of this land.

Marguerite Rawalt

#93. Every day, IRS agents levy liens on homes, bank accounts, and businesses; they confiscate cars, furniture, boats, and other personal property without the constitutional protections of due notice, hearing, and due process. If a person forcibly resists, government agents kill him for resisting arrest.

Jacob G. Hornberger

#94. Louis XVI started to die on June 21st 1791. For his flight tore away the veil of that false constitutional monarchy, and once more confronted the Patriot party with the whole problem of the revolution's future.

Francois Furet

#95. Why, I can't help smiling at people, and speaking prettily to them. I know I'm no better than the rest of the world; but I can't help it if I'm pleasanter. It's constitutional.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon

#96. 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.

Jon Meacham

#97. Whether I am or am not a Communist is irrelevant. The question is whether American citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or sympathies, may enjoy their constitutional rights.

Paul Robeson

#98. The Court abandoned the traditional constitutional meaning of 'religion' as a single denomination or system of worship and instead substituted a new 'modern' concept which even now remains vague and nebulous, having changed several times in recent years.

David Barton

#99. Hence, in a constitutional government the fighting-men have the supreme power, and those who possess arms are the citizens

Aristotle.

#100. If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration's success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.

Paul Craig Roberts