New Constitution Quotes

#1. A new constitution should be more amendable. A needlessly confusing system of courts should be altered to produce an arrangement that would be simple, responsible, and less awkward.

Charles Edison

#2. With our goddess, the Pachamama, and it is not possible to continue having a monopoly of religious faith, only Catholic. We have therefore adopted the new constitution as a secular state where all religious beliefs will be respected.

Evo Morales

#3. The new Constitution, however, is brought to us by a Muse, ordained by the authority of the People, and established at the center of our common life. We can read these words as creating a national religion, one at which we still worship.

Garrett Epps

#4. You have to let the people vote when it comes to a new constitution.

Martin Schulz

#5. 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

#6. I tip my hat to the new constitution, I take a bow for the new revolution, smile and grin at the change all around me.

The Who

#7. After the end of the Second World War it was a categorical imperative for us to declare that we renounced war forever in a central article of the new Constitution.

Kenzaburo Oe

#8. The world is always childish, and with each new gewgaw of a revolution or new constitution that it finds, thinks it shall never cry any more.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#9. Also in the new constitution, we want to lower the voting age from 20 years to 18 years and also gradually implement a voluntary military service in replacement of the current compulsory military service.

Chen Shui-bian

#10. Even though we now have the half-century-old new Constitution, there is a popular sentiment of support for the old one that lives on in reality in some quarters.

Kenzaburo Oe

#11. We also intend to deal with the issue of incorporating basic human rights into our new constitution.

Chen Shui-bian

#12. If we're picking people to draw out of their own conscience and experience a 'new' Constitution, we should not look principally for good lawyers. We should look to people who agree with us. When we are in that mode, you realize we have rendered the Constitution useless.

Antonin Scalia

#13. With the EU taking in ten more countries and adopting a new Constitution, organisations need more than ever intelligent professional help in engaging with the EU institutions.

Nick Clegg

#14. It is a singular capriciousness of the human mind, that after all the admonitions we have had from experience on this head, there should still be found men, who object to the new constitution for deviating from a principle which has been found the bane of the old.

Alexander Hamilton

#15. Did you hear that we're writing Iraq's new Constitution?
Why not just give them ours? We're not using it anymore.

Jay Leno

#16. We know that this man has a proven record of being a 'strict constructionist.' Our President has given us his word that he will interpret the Constitution rather than make new laws from the bench.

Rod Parsley

#17. The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.

Steven Pinker

#18. 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

#19. When the Constitution was written, the founders had no way of anticipating the new technologies that would evolve in the coming centuries.

Al Franken

#20. Whether the Sikhs want to worship in Wisconsin or the Christians want to worship in Texas or the Jews want to worship in New York, we're living under the magnificent umbrella of a Constitution that says we can.

Marianne Williamson

#21. New Jersey was threatened like no other region in this country and what we did was we took action within the constitution to make sure that law enforcement had all the information they needed.

Chris Christie

#22. It is perfectly clear, in the first place, that the constitution of the United States did not, of itself, create or establish slavery as a new institution; or even give any authority to the state governments to establish it as a new institution. The greatest sticklers for slavery do not claim this.

Lysander Spooner

#23. Roughly speaking, the President of the United States knows what his job is. Constitution and custom spell it out, for him as well as for us. His wife has no such luck. The First Lady has no rules; rather each new woman must make her own.

Shana Alexander

#24. In the span of three years, the Iraqi people participated in three elections, drafted a constitution, and elected a new government. While more work remains, this is remarkable progress.

Tim Murphy

#25. Although the governor strongly disagrees with the court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution, and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law.

Chris Christie

#26. Under the new government of the Constitution, beginning in 1789, all of the peacetime measures were repeated: chaplains, prayers, memorials of Thanksgiving, the Northwest Ordinance, funding for the Christian education of Indians.

M. Stanton Evans

#27. I do accept that, with - with respect to those vague terms in the Constitution such as equal protection of the laws, due process of law, cruel and unusual punishments. I fully accept that those things have to apply to new phenomena that didn't exist at the time.

Antonin Scalia

#28. I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.

Benjamin Rush

#29. We are involved in a constitution-building process of historic importance. The Convention should mark a new stage in European integration.

Romano Prodi

#30. The wise and just man will always feel that he stands on his own feet; that he imparts strength to the state, not receives security from it; and if all went down, he and such as he would quite easily combine in a new and better constitution.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#31. Having removed the dictator, the allies have moved to put Iraqis in control of Iraq. Now, as they draft and ratify their Constitution, we will indeed see the character of a new Iraqi nation revealed through the principles it chooses to uphold.

Kay Granger

#32. 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

#33. They're lots of good Americans here in New York who have common sense and who believe in free markets and free people and limited government under our Constitution. Those are the principles I've always stood for. I know they're right, and that's what I'm going to stand for.

Wendy E. Long

#34. They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.

Howard Zinn

#35. I believe that the Framers of the Constitution made their intent clear when they wrote the First Amendment. I believe they wanted to keep the new government from endorsing one religion over another, not erase the public consciousness or common faith.

Nick Rahall

#36. If the president uses executive orders to legislate new laws, that would be an example of him subverting legislative power from Congress, and might be considered a gross perversion of the Constitution.

Gary Hansen

#37. 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

#38. Alexander Hamilton, of New York, a signer of the Constitution, was a member of the ratifying convention in his state and did more than any other member to wring the approval of the new instrument from delegates practically instructed by their constituents to vote against it.

Charles A. Beard

#39. The principle of free speech is no new doctrine born of the Constitution of the United States. It is a heritage of English-speaking peoples, which has been won by incalculable sacrifice, and which they must preserve so long as they hope to live as free men.

Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

#40. 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

#41. 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

#42. This understanding, underlying constitutional interpretation since the New Deal, reflects the Constitution's demands for structural flexibility sufficient to adapt substantive laws and institutions to rapidly changing social, economic, and technological conditions.

Stephen Breyer

#43. On this day, when we're celebrating our constitutional heritage, I urge you to be faithful to that heritage - to impose on our fellow citizens only the restrictions that are there in the Constitution, not invent new ones, not to invent the right because it's a good idea.

Antonin Scalia

#44. [The necessary and proper clause] neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to Congress; But it is merely a declaration, for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those otherwise granted are included in the grant.

Joseph Story

#45. Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.

Hugo Black

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. The New Jersey constitution, says the court in its decision, requires that all students be provided with an opportunity to compete fairly for a place in our society. ... Pole vaulters using bamboo poles even with the greatest effort cannot compete with pole vaulters using aluminum poles.

Jonathan Kozol

#49. I have been so struck by the mettle of the men who founded this country and wrote the Constitution. What unbelievable persistence and integrity. I wonder if any of us would have the attention span required to forge a whole new world. I wish we did.

Rosanne Cash

#50. To the extent that these [New Deal policies] developed,
they were tortured interpretations of a document
[the Constitution] intended to prevent them.

Rexford Tugwell

#51. I mean, the Constitution of this country was written 200 years ago. The house I was living in in Madrid is 350 years old! America is still a project, and you guys are working on it and bringing new things to it every day. That is beautiful to watch.

Antonio Banderas

#52. There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

Antonin Scalia

#53. When conservative judges strike down laws, it's because of what's in the Constitution. When liberal judges strike down laws (or impose new laws), it's because of what's in the New York Times

Ann Coulter