Top 86 Quotes About Constitutions
#1. It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong.
Aristotle.
#2. It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty.
Ludwig Von Mises
#3. The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the constitutions and laws of sovereign states, overthrow their domestic relations, deprive loyal men of their property, and disloyal as well, without trial or condemnation.
Melville Fuller
#4. Patsy, suffering strengthens our constitutions and builds inner fortifications so that we never fall prey to the same agony twice. We must take upon ourselves a smaller evil to defend against the greater evil. We must take upon ourselves a smaller pain in order to survive." I
Stephanie Dray
#5. There are two things that seem to be at the bottom of our constitutions; one is a continual tendency towards politics; the other is family pride; and it is strange how these two feelings run through all of us.
Henry Adams
#6. Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests.
Howard Zinn
#7. Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified.
Michael Ignatieff
#8. The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#9. Government itself, which is the most unnatural and necessary of social mechanisms, has usually required the support of piety and the priest, as clever heretics like Napoleon and Mussolini soon discovered; and hence a tendency to theocracy is incidental to all constitutions.
Will Durant
#10. We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.
James Madison
#11. Half of the receipts in our cookbooks are mere murder to such constitutions and stomachs as we grow here ... in America, owing to our brighter skies and more fervid climate, we have developed an acute, nervous delicacy of temperament far more akin to that of France than of England.
Catharine Beecher
#12. Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led.
Thomas Carlyle
#13. The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#14. Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away.
Abraham Lincoln
#15. A tale of scandal is as fatal to the credit of a prudent lady as a fever is generally to those of the strongest constitutions. But there is a sort of puny, sickly reputation, that is always ailing, yet will wither the robuster characters of a hundred prudes.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
#16. The world is littered with constitutions that have written guarantees of rights but that don't actually deliver rights. What differentiates the ones where rights are real from where rights are fake is that it's in the initial interests of the majority to actually deliver these rights.
Noah Feldman
#18. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected.
Alexander Hamilton
#19. The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government.
John Adams
#20. My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar.
Maya Lin
#21. Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people; they fix too for the people the principles of their political creed.
Thomas Jefferson
#22. We may form free constitutions, but our vices will destroy them; we may enact laws, but they will not protect us.
Lyman Beecher
#23. The constitutions of Maryland and New York are founded in higher wisdom.
Ezra Stiles
#24. Allowing Islamic Sharia law into the constitutions of the U.S-created Islamic (!) Republic of Afghanistan and Republic of Iraq in 2004 and 2005 was as foolhardy as it would have been to write emperor-worship and Shinto militarism into Japan's 1946 constitution.
Robert Spencer
#25. Government has no right to make itself a party in any debates respecting the principles or mode of forming or of changing, constitutions. It is not for the benefit of those who exercise the powers of government, that constitutions, and the governments issuing from them, are established.
Thomas Paine
#26. Election of Public Officers. The right to vote is not a natural one but is derived from constitutions and statutes; it is not a privilege protected by the Fourteenth Amendment;
John Bouvier
#27. The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order.
Alexander Pope
#28. Dworkin, for example, argues that our law includes not only norms found in treaties, customs, constitutions, statutes, and cases, but also moral principles that provide the best justification for the norms found there.5 On his account the things justified by moral
H. L. A. Hart
#29. Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions.
Dannel Malloy
#30. Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions.
Alexander Hamilton
#31. Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure social life await her coming.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#32. The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
#33. Even the best of constitutions need sometimes to be amended and improved, for after all there is but one constitution which is infallible, but one constitution that ought to be held sacred, and that is the human constitution.
Ernestine Rose
#34. Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict.
Daniel Pipes
#35. The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens.
Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
#36. I feel that I'm sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Alabama, and those constitutions are founded upon a fundamental belief in God ... my display of the Ten Commandments and prayer before sessions are simply acknowledgments of God.
Roy Moore
#37. The system of banking have[for]ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens.
Thomas Jefferson
#38. Lots of countries have great constitutions, but their leaders have a practice of ignoring the rules whenever they feel like it.
Adam Davidson
#39. I just don't identify myself with a place. I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town.
Steve Martin
#40. Every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes.
Susan B. Anthony
#41. 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
#42. They were the supreme representatives of the Catalan nation, acting as spokesmen for it in any conflict with the Crown, and seeing that the laws or 'constitutions' of the Principality were observed to the letter; and at times they were, in all but name, the Principality's government.
J.H. Elliott
#43. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government.
George Washington
#44. The particular phraseology of the Constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the Constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.
John Marshall
#46. We're inquiring into the deepest nature of our constitutions: How we inherit from each other. How we can change. How our minds think. How our will is related to our thoughts. How our thoughts are related to our molecules.
Gerald Edelman
#47. Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?
Henry David Thoreau
#48. Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ... are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends.
Walter Lippmann
#49. The characteristic merit of the English constitutions is, that its dignified parts are very complicated and somewhat imposing, very old and rather venerable, while its efficient part, at least when in great and critical action, is decidedly simple and modern.
Walter Bagehot
#50. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.
Thomas Jefferson
#51. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions ... but I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. ...
Jon Meacham
#52. There is more of a nation's politics to be got out of its poetry than out of all its systematic writers on public affairs and constitutions.
Woodrow Wilson
#53. The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God.
James Russell Lowell
#54. Second, and in the same breath, constitutions seek to discipline politics and to limit government power.
Michael S. Greve
#55. Governor Ford is sworn to support the Constitution of the United States and also of this State Illinois, and these constitutions guarantee religious as well as civil liberty to all religious societies whatever.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#56. It is foolishly thought by some that democratical constitutions will not, cannot, last; that the States will quarrel with each other; that a king, or at least a nobility, are indispensable for the prosperity of a nation.
Marquis De Lafayette
#57. So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised.
Susan B. Anthony
#58. Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied.
Samuel Johnson
#59. It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions.
Salman Rushdie
#60. In 1688, Edward Lloyd opened a coffeehouse on London's seafront popular among underwriters, men in powdered wigs with mathematical minds and steely constitutions who offered to compensate owners if their boats were lost at sea.
Charles Duhigg
#61. Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.
John Marshall
#62. For good nurture and education implant good constitutions.
Plato
#63. I am fully persuaded that thousands of our fellow-men might profit equally by a similar course to mine; but, constitutions not being all alike, a different course of treatment may be advisable for the removal of so tormenting an affliction.
William Banting
#64. In which, if any, of these constitutions do we find the art of ruling being practiced in the actual government of men? What art is more difficult to learn? But what art is more important to us?
Plato
#65. Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things.
Alexander Hamilton
#66. The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity.
Aristotle.
#67. A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.
Joseph Addison
#68. When lions paint pictures men will not always be represented as conquerors. When women translate laws, constitutions, bibles and philosophies, man will not always be the declared heard of the church, the state, and the home.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#69. There are loads of countries that have nice written constitutions like ours. But there aren't loads of countries where they're followed.
Stephen Breyer
#70. People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History
Libba Bray
#71. To lose time in the manufacture of cut-and-dried constitutions is, in consequence, a puerile task, the useless labour of an ignorant rhetorician. Necessity and time undertake the charge of elaborating constitutions when we are wise enough to allow these two factors to act
Gustave Le Bon
#72. The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.
Noah Webster
#73. Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict.
Clarence Darrow
#74. Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed ... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty.
Algernon Sidney
#75. Liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full-bodied wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#76. The American constitutions were to liberty, what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax
Thomas Paine
#77. History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community.
Umberto Eco
#78. All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship.
Roger Williams
#79. Strike the words "white male" from all your constitutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish together.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
#80. All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.
Theodore Roosevelt
#81. Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.
Charles Caleb Colton
#82. The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never will have any.
Wendell Phillips
#83. The Constitution under which we live and which has not only blessed us but has become a model for other constitutions, is our God-inspired national safeguard ensuring freedom and liberty, justice and equality before the law.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#84. If it cannot be argued that a city has breached a federal or state environmental law, then surely it's committed some form of discrimination. If discrimination cannot be plausibly alleged, well, federal and state constitutions are full of words and promises that might have been violated.
Anonymous
#85. None but a people advanced to a high state of moral and intellectual excellence are capable in a civilized condition of forming and maintaining free governments, and among those who are so far advanced, very few indeed have had the good fortune to form constitutions capable of endurance.
John C. Calhoun
#86. Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians.
Margaret Thatcher
