Great Constitution Quotes

#1. But I think the possibility of a black and white society feeding each other's expertises, living harmoniously, will probably go along in fits and starts now but at least it has a great constitution now to back it up.

Janet Suzman

#2. We know no document is perfect, but when we amend the Constitution, it would be to expand rights, not to take away rights from decent, loyal Americans. This great Constitution of ours should never be used to make a group of Americans permanent second-class citizens.

Barbara Boxer

#3. Our great Constitution has been beaten and torn until now it hangs by a single thread, and that thread is our franchise to vote.

Ezra Taft Benson

#4. Our great Constitution challenges us to grow constantly.

Melissa Etheridge

#5. No one familiar with the common law of England can read the Constitution of the United States without observing the great desire of the Convention which framed that instrument to make it conform as far as possible with that law.

Samuel Freeman Miller

#6. [T]he foundation of a great Empire is laid, and I please myself with a persuasion, that Providence will not leave its work imperfect.

George Washington

#7. The only relevant side is that of the law and the Constitution. We do great injury to the integrity of the court system when we start speaking of sides and stop devoting ourselves to the pursuit of impartial justice.

Jon Kyl

#8. It's critical to have a sound foundation in free-market economics and the Constitution. A great many Republicans in Washington don't have that foundation.

Ted Cruz

#9. The benefits of the constitution and laws are alike for all; and the great Elohim has given me the privilege of having the benefits of the constitution and the writ of habeas corpus.

Joseph Smith Jr.

#10. In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not the executive department ... The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man.

James Madison

#11. Our constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws, not of men.

Gerald R. Ford

#12. For the past two centuries, those who do not prize freedom have chipped away at every major clause of our Constitution until today we face a crisis of great dimensions.

Ezra Taft Benson

#13. Other countries have stories of kings who will return at times of great
need. Only in England is it part of the constitution.

Susanna Clarke

#14. A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out.

Jill Lepore

#15. The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.

Thomas Jefferson

#16. 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.

James K. Polk

#17. 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

#18. The Constitution they wrote was designed to protect the rights of white, male citizens. As there were no black Founding Fathers, there were no founding mothers
a great pity, on both counts. It is not too late to complete the work they left undone. Today, here, we should start to do so.

Shirley Chisholm

#19. 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

#20. The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a great Measure, than they have it now. They may change their Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting Liberty.

John Adams

#21. There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.

John Adams

#22. I think it is appropriate that we pay tribute to this great constitutional principle which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution: the principle of religious independence, of religious liberty, of religious freedom.

John F. Kennedy

#23. In essence, the Mexica remained little more than a band of pirates, sallying forth from their great city to loot and plunder and to submit vast areas to tribute payment, without altering the essential social constitution of their victims

Eric Wolf

#24. It is to them I look, to the rising generation, and not to the one now in power, for these great reformations i.e., emancipation of slaves and settlement of the Virginia constitution on a firmer and more permanent basis.

Thomas Jefferson

#25. Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

Lord Chesterfield

#26. [I]n Great-Britain it is said that their constitution relies on the house of commons for honesty, and the lords for wisdom; whichwould be a rational reliance if honesty were to be bought with money, and if wisdom were hereditary.

Thomas Jefferson

#27. Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

Jon Stewart

#28. I think the average American has forgotten the great feel for liberty and accountability that the framers of the Constitution believed.

Joe Jamail

#29. He who intended to introduce a new law, should do it with a rope about his neck, in order that he might be immediately strangled, unless he could change the ancient constitution of the polity, to the very great advantage of the community.

Hierocles

#30. Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States.

Samuel Freeman Miller

#31. And truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings, the things that made this country great, you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative.

Sharron Angle

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

James K. Polk

#33. Our superhero foreign policy draws rivers of taxpayer dollars toward the center, empowering Washington at the expense of local governments. It also empowers the president at the expense of Congress in ways that upset the balance that the authors of the Constitution took great pains to design.

Ian Bremmer

#34. The great generalities of the constitution have a content and a significance that vary from age to age.

Benjamin Cardozo

#35. As J. S. Mill wrote, No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

#36. By my physical constitution I am but an ordinary man ... Yet some great events, some cutting expressions, some mean hypocracies, have at times thrown this assemblage of sloth, sleep, and littleness into rage like a lion.

John Adams

#37. As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.

David McCullough

#38. Each state, so that it does not abridge the great fundamental rights belonging, under the Constitution, to all citizens, may grant or withhold such civil rights as it pleases; all that is required is that, in this respect, its laws shall be impartial.

Lyman Trumbull

#39. 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

#40. For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

David Berlinski

#41. A great number of the women are victims to falling of the womb and weakness in the spine; but these are necessary results of their laborious existence, and do not belong either to climate or constitution.

Fanny Kemble

#42. For those who have taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic, it is a call of duty to take back America from a Commander-in-Chief that is incapable of understanding the sacrifices that have been made for the values that have made America great.

Ryan Zinke

#43. We are witnessing a great awakening. Millions of Texans, millions of Americans are rising up to reclaim our country, to defend liberty and to restore the Constitution.

Ted Cruz

#44. The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution.

Carl Levin

#45. Let all Americans sit down and read this great document. Since the Constitution's ratification, it has been the framework for our great nation.

Bob Latta

#46. During elections for the 1776 convention to frame a constitution for Pennsylvania, a Privates Committee urged voters to oppose great and overgrown rich men ... they will be too apt to be framing distinctions in society.

Howard Zinn

#47. The euro is a great achievement. It's a symbolic achievement. But, the European constitution was a missed opportunity.

Bernard-Henri Levy

#48. I do not lift my voice against the great and glorious Government guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution, but against those corrupt administrators who trample the Constitution and just laws under their feet.

Brigham Young

#49. The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

William J. Brennan

#50. For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.

Stephen Covey

#51. I would say hard times call for hard measures, but the Constitution is even a greater treasure than these monuments and the great men who inspired them.

Kenneth Eade

#52. Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

Sandra Day O'Connor