Federal Constitution Quotes

#1. I do not like [in the new Federal Constitution] the omission of a Bill of Rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for ... protection against standing armies

Thomas Jefferson

#2. Our federal Constitution embodies the idea of modern India: it defines not only India but also modernity.

Pranab Mukherjee

#3. Of all the objections which have been framed against the federal Constitution, this is perhaps the most extraordinary. Whilst the objection itself is levelled against a pretended oligarchy, the principle of it strikes at the very root of republican government.

James Madison

#4. In America, the Federal Constitution has endured as the most sagacious conservative document in political history

Russell Kirk

#5. Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to take from Congress the power of internal taxation. Calculation has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.

Thomas Jefferson

#6. The function of the prosecutor under the federal Constitution is not to tack as many skins of victims as possible against the wall. His function is to vindicate the rights of the people as expressed in the laws and give those accused of crime a fair trial.

William O. Douglas

#7. A corollary is that, when laws are out of touch with the people, those laws can and should be changed - from the most simple local regulations to the highest law of the land, our federal Constitution.

Adrian Cronauer

#8. The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.

James Madison

#9. The frame of mind in the local legislatures seems to be exerted to prevent the federal constitution from having any good effect.

Henry Knox

#10. I am sure that the dangers of this system (the Federal Constitution) are real, when those who have no similar interest with the people of this country (the South) are to legislate for us - when our dearest rights are to be left, in the hands of those, whose advantage it will be to infringe them.

Patrick Henry

#11. The success of those doctrines would also subvert the Federal Constitution, change the character of the Federal Government, and destroy our rights in respect to slavery.

John H. Reagan

#12. I think the federal government should be doing only what the Constitution says it should be. We don't have authority under the federal Constitution to have a big federal criminal justice system.

Paul Broun

#13. The Federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular, to the state legislatures.

James Madison

#14. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]

James Madison

#15. What is so powerful here is that we have the first federal appellate court and it's a case coming out of Utah affirming in the strongest, clearest, boldest terms that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry and equal protection for all Americans and all means all, including gay couples.

Evan Wolfson

#16. Sometimes local, state and federal laws so clearly run afoul of the Constitution that the court must step in and strike them down. In most cases, the court performs this admirably and with great restraint.

Mike DeWine

#17. There is no right by the federal or state constitution to manual recounts. There is no law that says that you must count dimpled ballots, constitutional or otherwise.

Bill Vaughan

#18. Internal self-government under a local constitution was authorized by Congress and approved by the residents in 1952, but federal law is supreme in Puerto Rico and residents do not have voting representation in the Congress.

Dick Thornburgh

#19. The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution.

Ronald Reagan

#20. Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.

Marvin Ammori

#21. We need an amendment that gives us the right to vote protected by the federal government and the Constitution.

Al Sharpton

#22. Under the United States Constitution, the federal government has no authority to hold states "accountable" for their education performance ... In the free society envisioned by the founders, schools are held accountable to parents, not federal bureaucrats.

Ron Paul

#23. The fact is there are a lot of things happening at the federal level that are absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of the Constitution. This is power that should be shifted back to the states, whether it's the EPA - there is no role at the federal level for the Department of Education.

Mike Huckabee

#24. For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful.

Joe Biden

#25. I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people.

Barack Obama

#26. You can look at founding father Alexander Hamilton nevertheless assuring - assuring - the countrymen in Federalist 78 that the role of the federal courts under the proposed Constitution would be limited.

Sam Brownback

#27. Controlling the interpretation of the Constitution is vital to the leftist agenda of expanding the federal government's power. That means keeping the federal judiciary as liberal as possible and treating the U.S. Supreme Court's liberal legacy as sacrosanct.

Joseph Sobran

#28. Outside of a few national security issues like treason that the Constitution lays out, we don't need federal crimes, and we don't need federal prisons. We need state crimes and state prisons.

Rob Woodall

#29. More fundamentally, however, the answer to petitioners' objection is that there can be no impairment of executive power, whether on the state or federal level, where actions pursuant to that power are impermissible under the Constitution. Where there is no power, there can be no impairment of power.

William J. Brennan

#30. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act.

James Madison

#31. I don't see any justification for the federal government owning land, other than the Statue of Liberty and maybe a few parks, maybe a few refuges. But to just own land to do nothing with it I think is a disservice to the Constitution.

Don Young

#32. Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

Sam Brownback

#33. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

James Madison

#34. The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it ... [I]f followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.

Clarence Thomas

#35. The property qualifications for federal office that the framers of the Constitution expressly chose to exclude for demonstrating an unseemly "veneration of wealth " are now de facto in force and higher than the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

Bill Moyers

#36. I am aware how difficult is the task to preserve free institutions over so wide a space and so immense a population, but we are blessed with a Constitution admirably calculated to accomplish it. Its elastic power is unequaled, which is to be attributed to its federal character.

John C. Calhoun

#37. The federal government views the Constitution as its enemy.

Andrew Napolitano

#38. No branch of the law is of more importance to the counsellor, the statesman, or the citizen, than a thorough acquaintance with the Constitution and laws of the Federal Government, as they are administered and as they affect the rights of the people.

Samuel Freeman Miller

#39. There are some in black robes sitting on federal benches all across this country. They're Democrats, Republicans, liberals, and even conservatives that pervert the Constitution.

Paul Broun

#40. It is surely only a matter of time before some federal judge finds the Constitution unconstitutional.

Mark Steyn

#41. I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

Narendra Modi

#42. The capacity of the commonwealth government created under the local constitution to exercise governmental powers in local affairs is like that of local government in the states of the union in regard to non-federal affairs at the local level.

Dick Thornburgh

#43. We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers.

William Rehnquist

#44. Frank Johnson was recognized as one of the great federal judges of American history, I suppose. He was a law-and-order judge. He was a classical, I think, conservative. But he believed that civil rights provided in the Constitution applied to everybody.

Jeff Sessions

#45. Public opinion: May it always perform one of its appropriate offices, by teaching the public functionaries of the State and of the Federal Government, that neither shall assume the exercise of powers entrusted by the Constitution to the other.

James K. Polk

#46. I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.

Thomas Jefferson

#47. Perhaps Americans should recognize that if they want to keep their privacy, they should ask the federal government to do only the things that the Constitution allows.

Dave Kopel

#48. The Constitution simply does not authorize the federal government to own any of this land (in the Western states).

Andrew Napolitano

#49. I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.

Tom DeLay

#50. We are living in a time when the very integrity of the Constitution is being threatened daily, from federal bailouts to federal assumption of control over private business.

David Limbaugh

#51. I think the motive is to establish in federal law the personhood from conception forward and try and alter the Constitution through statute.

Zoe Lofgren

#52. Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to.

Joseph Sobran

#53. As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically.

Antonin Scalia

#54. The Founding Fathers envisioned a federal government that trusts its people with their money and freedom, outlining this limited, non-intrusive federal government in ... the Constitution, leaving the other powers to people ... or to the states.

Milton Friedman

#55. September 11th does not justify ignoring the Constitution by creating broad new federal police powers. The rule of law is worthless if we ignore it whenever crises occur.

Ron Paul

#56. Generally, the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties, says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you. But it doesn't say what the state or federal government must do on your behalf.

Barack Obama

#57. In the United States we have, in effect, two governments ... We have the duly constituted Government ... Then we have an independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System, operating the money powers which are reserved to Congress by the Constitution.

Wright Patman

#58. I go where the revolution is, and the revolution is Ron Paul. Ron Paul is a champion of the Constitution. He's about getting rid of the Federal Reserve and shrinking federal government.

Christine Ebersole

#59. A federal judge did as he was supposed to do and upheld the Constitution. We should be thankful that we have judiciary that will do that.

Michael Newdow

#60. In the absence of a limitation on local enforcement powers, the states are bound by the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution to enforce violations of the federal immigration laws.

Russell Pearce