Quotes About Framers

#1. The Constitution's framers intended to restrict central authority to the few areas that could not be handled by states. The drafters would be horrified at how the present court misapplies what they designed.

Doug Bandow

#2. The very inclusion of the right to keep and bear arms in the Bill of Rights shows that the framers of the Constitution considered it an individual right.

Samuel Ray Cummings

#3. I sort of thought the framers of the Constitution were talking about the rights of individuals, not corporate entities.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#4. The Framers [of the Constitution] ... created the federally protected right of silence and decreed that the law could not be used to pry open one's lips and make him a witness against himself.

William O. Douglas

#5. The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the Framers understood that prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would be the very opposite of freedom.

Dahlia Lithwick

#6. The modern presidency, as expressed in the policies of the administration of George W. Bush, provides the strongest piece of evidence that we are governed by a fundamentally different Constitution from that of the framers.

Noah Feldman

#7. My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'?

Patrick Henry

#8. It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.

Robert Byrd

#9. The Framers of the Bill of Rights did not purport to 'create' rights. Rather, they designed the Bill of Rights to prohibit our Government from infringing rights and liberties presumed to be preexisting.

William J. Brennan Jr.

#10. All in all, the framers would probably agree that it's better to impeach too often than too seldom. If presidents can't be virtuous, they should at least be nervous.

Joseph Sobran

#11. Americans - not just starting thirty years ago but going back to the beginning, when we were rebelling against King George - we've always been of two minds about the government, which is why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did.

William J. Clinton

#12. Constitutional government, as designed by the framers, will survive only with a righteous people.

Ezra Taft Benson

#13. We don't care what the framers would have thought of violent video games. Times are changing.

Dahlia Lithwick

#14. The framers of the Constitution were so clear in the federalist papers and elsewhere that they felt an independent judiciary was critical to the success of the nation.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#15. 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

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

Joe Jamail

#17. The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them.

Dahlia Lithwick

#18. The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.

Walter E. Williams

#19. The framers knew that liberty is a fragile thing, and so should we.

William J. Brennan

#20. The framers understood that the president, as the head of our armed forces, must defend the nation from imminent threat. But when the mission shifts from defense to offense, congressional approval is essential.

Tim Kaine

#21. Indeed, if the Framers intended unenumerated rights to be protected without a bill of rights, how can we imagine that those rights were meant to be any less secure with a bill of rights.

Roger Pilon

#22. Neither James Madison, for whom this lecture is named, nor any of the other Framers of the Constitution, were oblivious, careless, or otherwise unaware of the words they chose for the document and its Bill of Rights.

Diane Wood

#23. It is in seeing ourselves whole that we can begin to see ways of working out our differences, of understanding our similarities and of finally forming the cohesive nation that can one day experience the 'domestic tranquility' so hoped for by the framers of the Constitution.

Robert C. Maynard

#24. Make no mistake, abortion-on-demand is not a right granted by the Constitution. No serious scholar, including one disposed to agree with the Court's result, has argued that the framers of the Constitution intended to create such a right.

Ronald Reagan

#25. 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

#26. I suspect that the framers of the Bill of Rights have long since rolled over in their graves.

Jay Parini

#27. 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

#28. America was founded to be a beacon of liberty, particularly religious liberty. The framers of our Constitution sought to preserve religious liberty to such an extent that they made it the first right protected in the Bill of Rights.

Edwin Meese

#29. The signers of the Declaration of Independence and the framers of the Constitution were inspired from on high to do that work.

Brigham Young

#30. The court's job is to uphold the Constitution and you don't call that off in times of crisis. Would the framers have allowed this practice?

Antonin Scalia

#31. If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

William J. Brennan

#32. It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#33. The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forbearance in its formation if it was intended to be broken up by every member.

Robert E.Lee

#34. While the framers of the United States Constitution were ashamed of slavery and used euphemisms in place of the term "slave", the authors of the Confederate Constitution proudly used the term no less than ten times.

C.L. Gammon

#35. Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

Sandra Day O'Connor

#36. 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

#37. The framers were realists; they recognized that the best constitution in the world could be distorted and destroyed by men determined to do so.

John Eidsmoe

#38. Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?

Barry Goldwater

#39. If the Constitution framers would come back today, they would have contempt for most of us.

Walter E. Williams

#40. The framers of the Constitution realized that ... there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought, and so they created the Senate to fulfill that high and vitally important duty.

Elihu Root

#41. I think [Louis] Brandeis challenges all of the current justices. As he said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." You have to take the values that the framers were concerned about and translate them into this new age.

Jeffrey Rosen

#42. [the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

Fisher Ames

#43. As you know, I have over the years written critically about the U.N. I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers.

John Bolton

#44. The framers hated the tyranny of King George, but they were also afraid of the mob. That's why they put so many checks and balances into our system, to guard against the excesses of a government that might be inflamed by public passion or perverted by a dictator's whim.

David Ignatius

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. The Constitution was framed in order to form a more perfect union, not to establish mass confusion.

Byron Goines

#48. As a framer and defender of the Constitution [Madison] had no peer.

Garry Wills