Quotes About Constitution

#1. Man is not committed in detail by his biological constitution to any particular variety of behavior.

Ruth Benedict

#2. When love enters, the whole spiritual constitution of a man changes, is filled with the Holy Ghost, and almost his form is altered.

D.H. Lawrence

#3. We have freedom of the press; I think it's guaranteed in the Constitution or something." The

Morgan Llywelyn

#4. It lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Learned Hand

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

James Madison

#6. I took an oath of office to the Constitution, I didn't take an oath of office to my party or my president.

Chuck Hagel

#7. The Confederate Constitution was almost identical to that of the United States.

Bruce Catton

#8. With all the defects in our Constitution, whether general or particular, the comparison of our government with those of Europe, is like a comparison of Heaven with Hell. England, like the earth, may be allowed to take the intermediate station.

Thomas Jefferson

#9. And therefore, for the sake of my mater, without any regard for my own, I hope all those that have a due regard for our constitution and for the rights and prerogatives of the crown, without which our constitution can not be preserved, will be against this motion.

Robert Walpole

#10. In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.

Alexander Hamilton

#11. An independent judiciary does not mean judges independent of the Constitution from which they derive their power or independent of the laws that they are sworn to uphold.

Thomas Sowell

#12. Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it.

Anthony Albanese

#13. If we fulfill our responsibility to the Constitution, the Supreme Court will be filled with superior legal minds who will pursue the one agenda that our founding fathers intended in writing the Constitution: justice, rather than political or personal goals.

Chuck Grassley

#14. While the Constitution is what the judges say it is, a public issue is something that Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor recognizes as such. The media by themselves do not make the decisions, but on behalf of themselves and larger interests they certify what is or is not on the nation's agenda.

Fred W. Friendly

#15. What a pleasant life could be had in this world by a handsome, sensible old lady of good fortune, blessed with a sound constitution and a firm will

Stella Gibbons

#16. 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

#17. Now whatever you think of the liberal agenda on its merits, until very recently nobody thought the Constitution meant what liberals now say it means.

Joseph Sobran

#18. The constitution is for us all to live together, a common life, we need each other.

Pope Theodoros II

#19. It's enshrined in our Constitution that an individual has a right to release information and disseminate information that makes the powers that be uncomfortable.

Moby

#20. The fact that we're protected under that Constitution in exercising the right of free speech, it's a wonderful thing. You've got to come from somewhere else to realize how valuable it is.

Pat Oliphant

#21. Yet at least we can admire the wise Prearrangement which has ordained that, as they have no hopes, so they shall have no memory to recall, and no forethought to anticipate, the miseries and humiliations which are at once a necessity of their existence and the basis of the constitution of Flatland.

Edwin A. Abbott

#22. If the Constitution says that the little guy should win, the little guy is going to win in court before me, ... But if the Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then the big guy is going to win because my obligation is to the Constitution.

John Roberts

#23. 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

#24. Privacy is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as freedom of speech is in the First Amendment.

Larry Flynt

#25. 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

#26. The Constitution never even mentions political parties, let alone the Republican and Democratic parties, yet all the election laws help to protect them from competition.

Bob Barr

#27. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says, but everyone made equal.

Ray Bradbury

#28. Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.

Mitt Romney

#29. The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.

Herbert Hoover

#30. It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy.

Al Smith

#31. The glory of justice and the majesty of law are created not just by the Constitution - nor by the courts - nor by the officers of the law - nor by the lawyers - but by the men and women who constitute our society - who are the protectors of the law as they are themselves protected by the law.

Robert Kennedy

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

Pranab Mukherjee

#33. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by swilling Bath water.

Charles Dickens

#34. One doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others." "This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything ... nor ought one to blame others.

Charles Darwin

#35. The vote, cast in a free atmosphere and with all inclinations and parties at present, was after all a vote to the Islamic Republic, to national independence, to the Constitution and to the Islamic causes.

Ali Khamenei

#36. You deny them hope. Any man in this world, Atticus, any man who has a head and arms and legs, was born with hope in his heart. You won't find that in the Constitution, I picked that up in church somewhere. They are simple people, most of them, but that doesn't make them subhuman.

Harper Lee

#37. The Constitution separated the ideologies and values of the Church from the State, and leaders of the State were thus educated in matters pertaining to the State. These leaders proved themselves time after time with their pragmatic intellectual capacities.

Mike Medavoy

#38. The beauty of a society is not just in the laws upon which the society revolves, but how the society regards, upholds and obeys the laws which set boundaries for a beautiful and a harmonious society!

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

#39. The government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. 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

#41. Religious people, in the name of the Constitution, are increasingly being shoved to the back of the social bus.

Pat Swindall

#42. Drunkenness is the vice of a good constitution or of a bad memory of a constitution so treacherously good that it never bends till it breaks; or of a memory that recollects the pleasures of getting intoxicated, but forgets the pains of getting sober.

Charles Caleb Colton

#43. Deep within the human constitution lie written laws of nature that should guide man in the conduct of his life.

Herbert M. Shelton

#44. The Constitution is a pantheon of values, and a lot of hard cases are hard because the Constitution gives no simple rule of decision for the cases in which one of the values is truly at odds with another.

David Souter

#45. The framers of our constitution had the sagacity to vest in Congress all implied powers: that is, powers necessary and proper to carry into effect all the delegated powers wherever vested.

John C. Calhoun

#46. The least we can do is to respect the Constitution because that's the foundation on which our republic is built. If you give the Constitution the go-by, your republic will be under stress.

Kishore Chandra Deo

#47. The Constitution was never meant to prevent people from praying, it's declared purpose was to protect their freedom to pray

Ronald Reagan

#48. Next to be in one with worshiping God, there is nothing in this world upon which this church should be more united than in upholding and defending the constitution of the United States.

David O. McKay

#49. I don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

Robert Bork

#50. It is a Constitution that morphs while you look at it like Plasticman ... That is contrary to our whole tradition, to in God we trust on the coins, to Thanksgiving proclamations, to (Congressional) chaplains, to tax exemption for places of worship, which has always existed in America.

Antonin Scalia

#51. At no moment in history has a bright young girl with plenty of food and a good constitution perished from too much learning.

Elizabeth Gilbert

#52. EU expansion is, unfortunately, continuing without a constitution, as a gradual process of standardization - and that's far more dangerous. It is very difficult to slow down this process, which is being pushed forward without significant public participation.

Vaclav Klaus

#53. Scoundrels will be corrupt and unconcerned citizens apathetic under even the best constitution.

William Earl Maxwell

#54. He [Roosevelt] has made some speeches that indicate that he is going quite beyond anything that he advocated when he was in the White House, and has proposed a program which is absolutely impossible to carry out except by a revision of the Constitution.

William Howard Taft

#55. I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I don't think the libertarians have it right when it comes to what the Constitution's all about. I don't think they have it right as to what our history is.

Rick Santorum

#56. All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.

Andrew Jackson

#57. Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins. Republics ... derive their strength and vigor from a popular examination into the action of the magistrates.

Benjamin Franklin

#58. That's the key: get the constitution in place. Get rule of law in place, capital will come, electricity will follow.

Steve King

#59. Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death.

Thomas Paine

#60. As god is my witness, it was never my intent to throw out the constitution. I thought it was hanging by a thread, and I could save it ... You don't save it by cutting that thread. - President Nielson

Orson Scott Card

#61. I don't agree when the USA, that lives by a constitution, says, OK, just because you look this way, we're going to ask you for your documentation, or you gotta go back to your country.

Pitbull

#62. 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

#63. What is in the Constitution is the burning desire and aspiration of all the people of Vietnam. So for the moment, we don't think about opposition parties.

Nong Duc Manh

#64. Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by arbitrary government power?

Paul Craig Roberts

#65. Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!

Henry Rollins

#66. I do believe that, under the law, under the Constitution of the United States, and under our public policy, that women deserve and should have a right to enjoy equal employment opportunity.

Gloria Allred

#67. The Bolivian government has promised to guarantee autonomy in the framework of unity, legality, and with the goal of equalizing the different regions of Bolivia. It's right there in the constitution.

Evo Morales

#68. The number of individuals employed under the Constitution of the United States will be much smaller than the number employed under the particular States.

James Madison

#69. To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.

Ron Paul

#70. Idleness ruins the constitution

Ovid

#71. Actually, each mental image of the world system is and remains limited, objectively by the historical situation and subjectively by its author's physical and mental constitution.

Friedrich Engels

#72. It's important for all Americans to know how vulnerable our Constitution is.

George Takei

#73. I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This is not for law enforcement. This is for us. And, in fact, when you read that Constitution and the Founding Fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny.

Sharron Angle

#74. A constitution should be framed so as not to impede the action of government, nor force the government to its violation.

Napoleon Bonaparte

#75. There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There's a prohibition against taking it away.

Alberto Gonzales

#76. One stands, in fact, in awe of the Constitution of the United States, though it is an idea and not quite a reality.

Nikki Giovanni

#77. It's part of the Constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then the restrictions of it have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You've got to regulate, consistent with the Second Amendment.

Rudy Giuliani

#78. Allowing Texas to display the Ten Commandments on State property but disallowing Kentucky courthouses from doing the same is a poor and flawed interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Ginny Brown-Waite

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

James K. Polk

#80. Enslave a man and you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort. The first touch of slavery snaps this spring.

Horace Mann

#81. turning the traditional hierarchical pyramid upside down to emphasize that everyone is responsible - able to respond - for living the constitution and getting the desired results while modeling the organization's valued behaviors.

S. Chris Edmonds

#82. If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought, not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

#83. I have a different constitution. I have a different brain; I have a different heart; I got tiger blood, man.

Charlie Sheen

#84. The Internet's distinct configuration may have facilitated anonymous threats, copyright infringement, and cyberattacks, but it has also kindled the flame of freedom in ways that the framers of the American constitution would appreciate - the Federalist papers were famously authored pseudonymously.

Jonathan Zittrain

#85. I think there are only three things that America will be known for 2,000 years from now when they study this civilization: the Constitution, jazz music and baseball. They're the three most beautifully designed things this culture has ever produced.

Gerald Early

#86. The Hungarian ministry begged the king earnestly to issue orders to all troops and commanders of fortresses in Hungary, enjoining fidelity to the Constitution, and obedience to the ministers of Hungary.

Lajos Kossuth

#87. People have a fundamental right to organize. It's rooted very much in the Constitution and people's right to free association.

Martin Heinrich

#88. 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

#89. We safeguard the right to attribution very strongly. After all, what we are fighting for is the intent of copyright as it is described in the US constitution: the promotion of culture. Many artists are using recognition as their primary driving force to create culture.

Rick Falkvinge

#90. The U.S. Constitution was meant to be universal, not just something that only America would observe. The principle of defending liberty for all people ideally should apply everywhere in the world.

Mark Skousen

#91. I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

Gil Scott-Heron

#92. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.

Anthony Kennedy

#93. I'm not against the government. I'm against this ever-expanding government that doesn't know its limits. And that's how I see the role of the attorney general, as someone in an office that can protect you and defend the Constitution and defend state sovereignty and our individual liberty.

Alan Wilson

#94. You give me a credit to which I have no claim in calling me "the writer of the Constitution of the United States." This was not, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, the offspring of a single brain. It ought to be regarded as the work of many heads and many hands.

James Madison

#95. 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

#96. I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

#97. Those Muslims in America's army that stand with the Constitution, I support them, and I think we all have to.

William G. Boykin

#98. Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it also had to create these. It had to educate society - and the state itself - into the values and ideas of liberal constitutionalism.

Orlando Figes

#99. The US Constitution serves the same function as the British royal family: it offers a comforting symbol of tradition and continuity, thereby masking a radical change in the actual system of power.

Joseph Sobran

#100. When cerebral processes enter into sports, you start screwing up. It's like the Constitution, which says separate church and state. You have to separate mind and body.

Bill Lee