Quotes About The Amendments

#1. Segregation was a burden for many blacks, because the end of the civil war and the amendments added to the constitution elevated expectations beyond reality in some respects.

Ed Smith

#2. A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out.

Jill Lepore

#3. And, as you recall, last year, people were asking us, don't vote on the bill until you read every part of the bill. So, as a good attorney and as a good legislator, I think it's my responsibility to read the amendments.

Henry Cuellar

#4. We've got some people who think Shariah law oughta be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there, the Second Amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed.

Louie Gohmert

#5. Without amendments we would never even have had the Bill of Rights.

Adrian Cronauer

#6. The health of the second amendment is the primary indicator of the overall health of the nation.

John Longenecker

#7. I think, from the broad political spectrum, not just the Freedom Caucus, I think there is a need for internal reform that is how we bring bills up, getting back to regular order, how we offer amendments or don't offer amendments.

Jason Chaffetz

#8. Amendments occupy a great deal of most legislators' time, particularly those lawmakers in the minority. Members of Congress do author major bills, but more commonly they make minor adjustments to the bigger bill.

Matt Taibbi

#9. Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments - the American people really don't care.

Chuck Schumer

#10. The next year, the Court decided what is generally viewed as the major case of the early years. The decision, Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), provoked an immediate backlash, in the form of the first constitutional amendment to be ratified after the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights.

Linda Greenhouse

#11. This has not been a legislative process worthy of the Senate. Members of the Judiciary Committee, as I just said, were implored to save their amendments for the floor. Then, when we got here, we were told no amendments could be accepted.

Russ Feingold

#12. I was in the state Senate in Wyoming, and we actually legislated. We offered amendments on bills and voted on things.

John Barrasso

#13. The Second Amendment is not really a right.

Rosie O'Donnell

#14. [T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments.

Alexander Hamilton

#15. The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that.

Neil Gaiman

#16. I think it's unconstitutional on the 10th Amendment front.

Mitt Romney

#17. Several amendments should be made to the primary and general election laws to improve them, but such changes must in no way interfere with a full and free expression of the people's choice in naming the candidates to be voted on at general elections.

Arthur Capper

#18. The government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.

Thurgood Marshall

#19. Over the years, so many exceptions and amendments were made to China's one-child policy that it was hard to pinpoint a moment to pronounce it dead.

Barbara Demick

#20. The [tenth] amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.

Harlan F. Stone

#21. There are amendments never offered, there are bills never heard, that are basically killed because of the process.

Dan Webster

#22. The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank.

Muhammad Yunus

#23. I'm not scared of diversity. We have to have debates and win the argument, and if there are amendments that need to be brought up so we find out where the party is, so be it.

Jason Chaffetz

#24. I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother's womb is a person at the moment of conception.

Mike Huckabee

#25. The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the revolution over!

Rand Paul

#26. Of course same sex marriage is constitutional! The right to be yourself, to pursue life, liberty, and property, is protected several ways over several amendments. John Boehner should know this.

Henry Rollins

#27. No one contends that the other Amendments that preserve rights of 'the people' -the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth-do not preserve individuals' rights. The same must be true of the Second.

Jed Babbin

#28. We look back at the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments, where people screamed and hollered it's going to be too expensive, they couldn't afford it, and it wouldn't work. And it worked. It worked faster than people expected, at much less cost.

Frances Beinecke

#29. We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor.

John Engler

#30. It has been pretty much downhill ever since the 13th amendment

Zach Braff

#31. Thousands of members of Congress have come and gone over the years, their individual achievements hidden in committee reports, private compromises, amendments pushed through or blocked, and innumerable, unnoticed meetings.

Elliott Abrams

#32. The idea [passing the 17th amendment] benefited from a unique political and cultural atmosphere that consumed a nation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries-a progressive populism promoting simultaneously radical egalitarianism and centralized authoritarianism.

Mark Levin

#33. When did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage? 1791? 1868, when the 14th Amendment was adopted?

Antonin Scalia

#34. Just last week, I was successful in passing two bi-partisan amendments through the House of Representatives that aim to address the even larger problem of cracking down on countries who export the materials to create meth into the United States.

Mark Kennedy

#35. The next time you get the urge to shut somebody up because they don't see the world exactly the same way you do, take a deep breath, get out your Bill of Rights, and count to the ten amendments.

Dennis Miller

#36. All alterations and amendments of the Lord's own Word - are defilements and pollutions.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

#37. I have little patience with people who take the Bill of Rights for granted. The Bill of Rights, contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is every American's guarantee of freedom.

Harry S. Truman

#38. A powerful wind swept through the shtetl, making it whistle. Those studying obscure texts in dimly lit rooms looked up. Lovers making amends and promises, amendments and excuses, fell silent.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#39. The right wing always mobilizes around constitutional amendments: the right to bear arms, school prayer.

Al Sharpton

#40. I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one's religious convictions.

Frank Murphy

#41. It's either the Amendment or this Confederate peace. You cannot have both.

David Strathairn

#42. I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution.

L. Neil Smith

#43. There are two amendments only which I am anxious for: 1. A bill of rights, which it is so much the interest of all to have that I conceive it must be yielded ... 2. The restoring of the principle of necessary rotation, particularly to the Senate and Presidency, but most of all to the last ...

Thomas Jefferson

#44. That's in the First Amendment?

Christine O'Donnell

#45. I think in Singapore, we stand a chance of making the one-man-one-vote system work. With amendments as we have done, you know, like GRCs.. We need to make it work. And I believe with pragmatic adjustments, given these favourable conditions, we can have more open debate.

Lee Kuan Yew