Top 100 Quotes About Our Constitution
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. 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
#4. Despite the enormous role that local government plays in our daily lives, the constitution makes not one mention of it.
Anthony Albanese
#5. 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
#6. 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
#7. 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
#8. 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
#9. 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
#10. 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
#11. Our federal Constitution embodies the idea of modern India: it defines not only India but also modernity.
Pranab Mukherjee
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. 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
#17. 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
#18. To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.
Ron Paul
#19. It's important for all Americans to know how vulnerable our Constitution is.
George Takei
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. Isn't protecting our legal citizens from an invading army of illegal aliens who are using our services and taking our jobs, isn't that a basic notion of fairness? Isn't that in the Constitution? Where is the fairness to American citizens here?
Rush Limbaugh
#24. Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.
Noah Feldman
#25. 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
#26. I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.
Benjamin Franklin
#27. The liberals think government exists to fix what's wrong with America. They find fault with our Constitution, our economic model and our core values. We disagree with the premise of their argument. We believe there's nothing wrong with America that an extra dose of freedom won't cure.
Rick Perry
#28. If our constitution had followed the style of Saint Paul, the First Amendment might have concluded: "But the greatest of these is speech." In the darkness of tyranny, this is the key to the sunlight. If it is granted, all doors open. If it is withheld, none.
Robert Kennedy
#29. Conservatives need to know how important it is to fill out the census. It is one of the only things our Constitution specifically asks of U.S. citizens and boycotting will just help liberals expand government even further.
Patrick McHenry
#30. I think there is a puritanical wind that is blowing. I have never seen such a lack of separation between church and state in America, I don't believe in God, but if I did I would say that sex is a Godgiven right. Otherwise it's the end of our species.
Kevin Bacon
#31. I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.
Narendra Modi
#32. Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#34. Well, today, we are in the struggle brought on to us by the terrorists of Islam. It is a war that we did not choose. It was a war that was declared against us as Americans, against our people, against our Constitution.
Todd Tiahrt
#35. May those principles, which were so honorably and nobly defended, namely, the Constitution of our land, by our fathers, be established forever.
Joseph Smith Jr.
#36. I found unconventional and it exactly explains your upbringing." Millie's lips curved into a grin. "Unconstitutional doesn't explain you at all, unless you've been participating in something that goes against our country's constitution.
Jen Turano
#37. 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
#38. One of the [Million Mom] marchers said 'the hands that rock the cradle rule this nation.' I thought, 'no Madame, the hands that rock the cradle rule our families and governments and corporations. The hands that wrote the Constitution rule this nation'.
Charlton Heston
#39. The hand that stocks the drug stores rules the world. Let us start our Republic, with a chain of drug stores, a chain of grocery stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a national game. After that we can write our Constitution.
Kurt Vonnegut
#40. Next to upholding the Constitution of the United States, the president's highest duty is to protect the security of this country - our national security.
Wesley Clark
#41. 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
#42. You know, the Constitution - there's nothing like it. But it doesn't necessarily give us the right to commit suicide as a country, OK? ... We're not gonna allow the people to come into our country ... And if people want to come in, there's gonna be extreme vetting.
Donald Trump
#43. I just want people who are qualified, I want them to believe in the Constitution of the United States of America. So yep, I don't have a problem with appointing an openly gay person. Because they're not going to try to put sharia law in our laws.
Herman Cain
#44. We have this historic problem that we have a quarter of our population, the people of Quebec, who have never signed on to the Constitution. That can't go on forever.
Jack Layton
#45. If we don't uphold our Constitution and our values, that over time that will make us less safe. And that will be a recruitment tool for organizations like al-Qaida. That's what I've gotta keep my eye on.
Barack Obama
#46. Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.
Abraham Lincoln
#47. The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.
Thomas Jefferson
#48. In the same period that the Americans have lived under one constitution our French friends notched up five. A Punch cartoon has a 19th century Englishman asking a librarian for a copy of the French constitution, only to be told: 'I am sorry Sir, we do not stock periodicals.'
Margaret Thatcher
#49. The debate over judicial nominations is a debate over the judiciary itself. It is a debate over how much power unelected judges should have in our system of government, how much control judges should have over a written constitution that belongs to the people.
Orrin Hatch
#50. There is a difference between constitutional government and judicial dictatorship. And I think it's time we remembered that our Constitution was not put together in order to establish the sovereignty of the judges, it was framed in order to guarantee the sovereignty of the people.
Alan Keyes
#51. When it comes to our Constitution, judges perform, certainly, an important role. But the people, acting through their elected representatives, should play an even more important role.
Mike DeWine
#52. Since the writing of our Constitution, our religious liberties have been systematically threatened and whittled away by Supreme Court justices who interpret the First Amendment as a prohibition against religious activity on public property.
Tim LaHaye
#53. The God we worship is no respecter of persons, but He is a respecter of men's rights, and a guardian of them-a fact clearly shown in the heaven-inspired Constitution of our country, and in the Gospel itself, which might be termed the Constitution of Eternity.
Orson F. Whitney
#54. After all, our Constitution was intended as a popular document. It was drafted and ratified by the people. It established democratic institutions. It entrusts the people with the power to make the tough decisions. And, in most cases, it prefers the will of the people to the unchecked rule of judges.
Mike DeWine
#55. 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
#56. The core values of our constitution are at the heart of our nation's progress.
Edward Kennedy
#57. Our laws are like the software that runs our country. All the laws for a country, together, are called its legal code, just like computer software is written using code.
Liz Long
#58. Government is necessary for our survival. We need government in order to survive. The Founding Fathers created a special place for government. It is called the Constitution.
Michael Badnarik
#59. We say keep your change, we'll keep our God, our guns, our constitution.
Sarah Palin
#60. Our constitution got built around the idea of minority protection.
Eula Biss
#61. It is now well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas ... This right to receive information and ideas, regardless of their social worth, ... is fundamental to our free society.
Thurgood Marshall
#62. Our state has a balanced budget. We have to live within our means in the state of Wyoming. I was in the state senate. This country needs a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
John Barrasso
#63. The moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing.
Thomas Jefferson
#64. The President is bound to stop at the limits prescribed by our Constitution and law to the authorities in his hands, [and this] would apply in an occasion of peace as well as war.
Thomas Jefferson
#65. The United States is truly remarkable, a nation founded on a set of Enlightenment ideals so beautifully expressed by the Declaration of Independence and codified in the U.S. Constitution. We should feel good about our ideals, even when we don't quite manage to live up to them.
Jay Parini
#66. But I think the Court again heard clearly the simple theme that ennobles our Constitution: that no one shall be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe because of nonconformity.
E.B. White
#67. The Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.
Rand Paul
#68. Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice.
Robert Kagan
#69. The homosexual agenda represents a clear and present danger to virtually every fundamental right given to us by our Creator and enshrined for us in our Constitution.
Bryan Fischer
#70. America is not a nation of separation. All our citizens are Americans. The common denominator is our language. Our language is English. The glue that binds generation after generation is both our Constitution and our English language.
James Traficant
#71. The Constitution empowers the people to resolve our day's most contentious issues. When judges forget this basic truth, they do a disservice to our democracy and to our constitution.
Mike DeWine
#72. Our founders made it extraordinarily difficult to amend the Constitution.
Barack Obama
#73. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe ... that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market ... That at any rate is the theory of our constitution.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#74. I am ... for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.
Thomas Jefferson
#75. Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.
Melissa Bean
#76. We make allowance for a certain degree of selfishness in men; because we know it to be inseparable from human nature, and inherent in our frame and constitution. By this reflexion we correct those sentiments of blame, which so naturally arise upon any opposition.
David Hume
#77. Truth-telling to Congress and the public is not disloyal in America: it is an expression of the higher loyalty officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the sovereign public. It is a courageous, patriotic, and effective way to serve our country. The time to speak out is now.
Daniel Ellsberg
#78. No higher duty, or more solemn responsibility, rests upon this Court than that of translating into living law and maintaining this constitutional shield deliberately planned and inscribed for the benefit of every human being subject to our Constitution-of whatever race, creed or persuasion.
Hugo Black
#79. The nature of our constitution makes eloquence more useful and more necessary in this country than in any other in Europe.
Bill Vaughan
#80. The makers of our Constitution ... conferred, as against the government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men.
Louis D. Brandeis
#81. Do we really want the FCC to conduct investigations and issue warnings to radio talk show hosts nationwide who simply discuss the important issues of our time? The Constitution says 'freedom of speech,' not 'freedom of government-approved fair speech in rationed amounts.'
Tim Walberg
#82. Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish.
Adam Weishaupt
#83. Our Constitution wisely assigns both joint and separate roles to each branch of the government; and a President and a Congress who hold each other in mutual respect will neither permit nor attempt any trespass.
John F. Kennedy
#84. If we want to preserve our liberty, it is up to us to know what is going on, to know the Constitution, to know these limitation on the power of Congress and to insist that our leaders obey.
Michael Farris
#85. Our government leaders ... have made many mistakes in the past when they have lost sight of the sacred American values rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We are at the brink of even graver mistakes and assaults on these values.
Samuel Dash
#86. I believe that justice is instinct and innate, that the moral sense is as much a part of our constitution as that of feeling, seeing, or hearing; as a wise Creator must have seen to be necessary in an animal destined to live in society.
Thomas Jefferson
#87. Experience and imagination must enter into the very constitution of our thoughts involving concrete individuals.
Zeno Vendler
#88. Like a majority of Americans in recent years, I came to understand that fear of homosexuality was leading our governments - including the one I ran as Governor of Mississippi - to deny the equal rights to an entire segment of our population that are afforded all of us under the Constitution.
Ronnie Musgrove
#89. I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government; I mean an additional article taking from the Federal Government the power of borrowing.
Thomas Jefferson
#90. The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.
Georg Buchner
#91. As Members of Congress, we swear an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. It means something to be an American because we believe in our country, we believe in our people, and we believe in our constitution.
Todd Tiahrt
#93. Now what has happened in our country during the time we have been plunging toward socialism? Are we actually at that point where the Constitution may be hanging by a single thread and we need to step in to save it?
Ernest L. Wilkinson
#94. Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed,
Ron Paul
#95. The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents.
Milton Friedman
#96. We also intend to deal with the issue of incorporating basic human rights into our new constitution.
Chen Shui-bian
#97. The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.
Patrick Henry
#98. I really think the Patriot Act violates our Constitution. It was, it is, an illegal act. The Congress, the Senate and the president cannot change the Constitution.
Peter Camejo
#99. No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
Edmund A. Opitz
#100. In a sense there is no 'opposition' in Bahrain, as the phrase implies one unified block with the same views. Such a phrase is not in our constitution, unlike say the United Kingdom. We only have people with different views and that's ok.
Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa
