Top 89 Quotes About The American Constitution
#1. 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
#2. 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
#3. The American Constitution was not written to protect criminals; it was written to protect the government from becoming criminals.
Lenny Bruce
#4. The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'.
Winston Churchill
#5. [quoting someone else] the American constitution is a document designed by geniuses to be eventually interpreted by idiots
Joseph J. Ellis
#6. But while the American Constitution was the child of war, ours grew out of discussion, bargaining and negotiation.
John Allen Fraser
#7. The connections I draw between human nature and political systems in my new book, for example, were prefigured in the debates during the Enlightenment and during the framing of the American Constitution.
Steven Pinker
#8. Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.
Daniel Webster
#9. The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face, instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.
George Bernard Shaw
#10. The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest.
Stephen Ambrose
#12. To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.
Calvin Coolidge
#13. In view of the tide of religiosity engulfing a once secular republic it is refreshing to be reminded by Freethinkers that free thought and skepticism are robustly in the American tradition. After all the Founding Fathers began by omitting God from the American Constitution.
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.
#14. I want to prevent us reifying 'the Internet' as something to be preserved like some people want to preserve the American Constitution as it was written.
Evgeny Morozov
#15. As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.
William E. Gladstone
#16. I'm a fighter. I am passionate about what I believe. I've been passionate my whole life about the [American] Constitution.
Ted Cruz
#17. It was an egregious violation of the American Constitution. We were innocent American citizens, and we were imprisoned simply because we happened to look like the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. It shows us just how fragile our Constitution is.
George Takei
#18. The Koran likewise. The Magna Carta. The American Constitution. Billions of people govern their lives by those words. Society has been altered by them.
Steve Berry
#19. First of all, there's no mention of political parties in the Constitution, so you begin American history with not only no political conventions but also no parties.
Michael Beschloss
#20. Our Constitution rests on the good sense and the respect of the American people.
John Quincy Adams
#21. We believe in individual initiative, personal responsibility, opportunity, freedom, small government, the Constitution. These principles, these American principles are key to getting our economy back to being successful and leading the world.
Mitt Romney
#22. I would understand later that baseball was what truly made him an American: the sports pages were more crucial documents than the Constitution.
Pete Hamill
#23. Now, how do you explain Obama's claim, that he can kill American citizens without due process? Well, he has his attorney general get up and say, "Well, it doesn't say in the constitution judicial process. It just says due process." Now that's a lawyerly diversion from the truth.
Ray McGovern
#24. The parents were too American, too aware of the rights granted them by their Constitution to accept injustices meekly. They could not be bulldozed and exploited as could the immigrants and the second-generation Americans.
Betty Smith
#25. I have to make the very best judgments I can make in terms of what's gonna keep the American people safe and is what - what's gonna uphold our Constitution and our traditions of due process.
Barack Obama
#26. President is a curious term for the American head of state, because "presiding" in any meaningful sense is the one thing the president of the United States does not do.
Garrett Epps
#27. People were floored when they saw that the underwear bomber, after less than 50 minutes of interrogation, was given the rights, privileges, and immunities of an American citizen under the Constitution.
Michele Bachmann
#28. The right to a trial is a core principle of the American legal system. Depriving Americans of these essential liberties undermines the Constitution while doing nothing to strengthen our national security.
John Garamendi
#29. The Senate Majority Leader has the unilateral ability to stand up and say, 'If you defy Congress, if you defy the Constitution, if you defy the American people, none of your nominees will be confirmed.'
Ted Cruz
#30. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#31. At no time, at no place in solemn convention assembled, through no chosen agents, had the American people officially proclaimed the United States to be a democracy. The Constitution did not contain the word or any word lending countenance to it ...
Charles A. Beard
#32. No matter how many lawyers and lawsuits Obama throws at Arizona, we will have the American people and the Constitution on our side.
Russell Pearce
#33. Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a 'living' document.
Al Franken
#34. I've been involved in the intelligence side of the federal government for a long time. We all know that we have to have a balance between security to protect the American people and liberty. We take an oath to protect and defend the constitution and the American people.
Barack Obama
#35. For 70 years there's been a consensus among scholars and the American people on a reading to the Constitution that protects the right of privacy, the autonomy of individuals, while at the same time empowering the federal government to protect the less powerful.
Joe Biden
#36. 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
#37. It's a curious thing in American life that the most abject nonsense will be excused if the utterer can claim the sanction of religion. A country which forbids an established church by law is prey to any denomination. The best that can be said is that this is pluralism of a kind.
Christopher Hitchens
#38. The American people deserve a blueprint for policymaking that is built upon the Constitution of the United States and the principles of fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense.
Jason Chaffetz
#39. 2008 was to the American economy what 9/11 was to national security. Yet while 9/11 prompted the U.S. government to tear up half the Constitution in the name of public safety, after 2008, authorities went in the other direction.
Matt Taibbi
#40. It seems incredible that the trustees of typically American fortune-created foundations should have permitted them to be used to finance ideas and practices incompatible with the fundamental concepts of our Constitution. Yet there seems evidence that this may have occurred.
Norman Dodd
#41. It is easy to respect secular Americans who hold fast to the Constitution and to American values generally. And any one of us who believes in God can understand why some people, given all the unjust suffering in the world, just cannot believe that there is a Providential Being.
Dennis Prager
#42. I think the average American has forgotten the great feel for liberty and accountability that the framers of the Constitution believed.
Joe Jamail
#43. Every American deserves their day in court. Every American is innocent until proven guilty. These are core values enshrined in our founding document - the United States Constitution.
John Garamendi
#44. It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention.
Lyndon B. Johnson
#45. The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.
Benjamin Franklin
#46. At Rest An American Soldier And Defender of the Constitution.
Jefferson Davis
#47. The Americans of the age were not an irreligious people; and the fact that they were Christian was very important, for the marks of Christianity lay all across the Constitution.
Theodore H. White
#48. TOTALLY AMERICAN" personifies the dreams, inspiration, and ambition of the American people at a time we need it most. Reach deep in tribute to our founding Fathers, our Constitution, and our brave military forces. This is the fabric of America!
Stu Taylor
#49. How did we win the election in the year 2000? We talked about a humble foreign policy: No nation-building; don't police the world. That's conservative, it's Republican, it's pro-American - it follows the founding fathers. And, besides, it follows the Constitution.
Ron Paul
#50. I cannot believe that the American people and the people they elected would use the Constitution to stifle any group's rights.
Jean O'Leary
#51. As we see thousands of public and private Christmas trees and nativity displays around the country, they remind us again of the powerful American value built into our Constitution: our freedom of religion.
James Lankford
#52. The Constitution provided a nearly limitless theater of argument. The founding era was, in reality, one of the most partisan periods of American history.
David Sehat
#53. I don't believe in the Constitution because I'm American, I'm American because I believe in the Constitution.
J.S.B. Morse
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. The Constitution gives every American the inalienable right to make a damn fool of himself.
John Ciardi
#57. 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
#58. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot? Why, because being a God-fearing, self-reliant, freedom-loving American is a choice. Or we could be one of those government-dependent, Constitution-fearing socialists. That's the question, actually, the Founding Fathers asked. Are you a Loyalist or a Patriot?
Matt Shea
#59. Could it be that violence is as much a part of the American identity as the Constitution, and a vital component to its economic stability?
Henry Rollins
#60. Frank Johnson was recognized as one of the great federal judges of American history, I suppose. He was a law-and-order judge. He was a classical, I think, conservative. But he believed that civil rights provided in the Constitution applied to everybody.
Jeff Sessions
#61. There is no negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, honor enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own constitution
Frederick Douglass
#62. If sexual relations between consenting adults are not part of the right to privacy guaranteed by the Constitution, then American democracy is in trouble.
Coretta Scott King
#63. If the American people really tire of democracy and want to make a trial of Fascism, I shall be the last person to object. But if that is their mood, then they had better proceed toward their aim by changing the Constitution and not by forgetting it.
H.L. Mencken
#64. As time would prove, he had written one of the great, enduring documents of the American Revolution. The constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world.
David McCullough
#65. What the Founding Fathers created in the Constitution is the most magnificent government on the face of the Earth, and the reason is this: because it was intended to preserve the American society and the American spirit, not to transform it or destroy it.
Mark Levin
#66. Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.
Eamon De Valera
#67. Why would I be willing to challenge my Republican leadership? Because my allegiance will always be to the Constitution and the American people first and foremost, not to my political party.
Matt Salmon
#68. The seal and the constitution, reflects the thinking of the founding fathers that this was to be a nation by white people, and for white people. Native Americans, Blacks, and all other non-white people, were to be the burden bearers for the real citizens of this nation.
Louis Farrakhan
#69. It may not be in the constitution, but every American has a god-given right to provinciality and ignorance.
Dov Davidoff
#70. [The Drafters of the Constitution] were intent on avoiding more than 100 years of religious intolerance and persecution in American colonial history and an even longer heritage of church-state problems in Europe.
John M Swomley
#71. 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
#72. In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule.
Robert W. Welch Jr.
#73. Without the three-fifths rule, there wouldn't have been a Constitution of the United States - not one that governed the American South, at any rate - because the South wouldn't have ratified it.
Timothy Noah
#74. Members of the Congress, the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American people, custodians of the American heritage. It is my task to report the State of the Union
to improve it is the task of us all.
John F. Kennedy
#75. It is my privilege to have introduced House Resolution 1612 honoring the Constitution of the United States, and the freedoms and rights it has given to every American.
Bob Latta
#76. Even putting aside the Judeo-Christian morality upon which the Constitution and our nation's culture are based, the notion of forced euthanasia would contradict the long-held body of medical ethics to which all American doctors must adhere.
Sherwin B. Nuland
#77. The danger of having the Constitution twisted and misconstrued to support vested interests and prejudices must be guarded against if American democracy is to maintain a progressive character.
Helen Keller
#78. In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.
Thomas Jefferson
#79. It is the Constitution of the United States that has been undermined, undercut, and is under attack. It is the American people's liberties that is in jeopardy. That is why I wrote 'Losing America.'
Robert Byrd
#80. I hope we have not sunk so low in American society that plain, simple, justice according to the Constitution must be regarded as a perk. Police
Naomi Zack
#81. The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution,
Newt Gingrich
#82. Well, first of all, I don't want to debate the word conservative, but by my definition, a conservative is someone who wants to conserve the Constitution of the United States and the American tradition and law that no one is above the law.
Dan Rather
#83. For an American to be patriotic is to be loyal to the principles of our Constitution, and the First Amendment. The truth is that the policies of the government is sometimes in conflict with that. In our country, patriotism should not be defined as obedience to an authority.
Daniel Ellsberg
#84. The real struggle between an American government and the people was one of power, which was settled when they designed their Constitution, which conceded the sovereignty of the people when it came to politics, and the sovereignty of the consumer when it came to economics.
Ndabaningi Sithole
#85. If one examines the American idea of freedom, the individual, free enterprise, their Constitution, their political and economic structures as well as their mode of exploiting their natural resources, all these are shrouded in the idea of justice.
Ndabaningi Sithole
#86. The Constitution was a reaffirmation of faith in the principles painfully evolved over the centuries by the English-speaking peoples. It enshrined long-standing English ideas of justice and liberty, henceforth to be regarded on the other side of the Atlantic as basically American.
Winston S. Churchill
#87. The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.
David K. Shipler
#88. American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep.
Katharine Whitehorn
#89. I believe in the American tradition of separation of church and state which is expressed in the First Amendment to the Constitution. By my office - and by personal conviction - I am sworn to uphold that tradition.
Lyndon B. Johnson
