Quotes About The Constitutional Convention

#1. In 1987, the United States celebrates the bicentennial anniversary of the constitutional convention that provided the basic rules for the American political order. This convention was one of the very few historical examples in which political rules were deliberately chosen.

James M. Buchanan

#2. There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury.

George Washington

#3. Washington presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and is often credited with its success. But he had no known part in drafting its provisions.

Edmund Morgan

#4. [at the Constitutional Convention] the States were divided into different interests not by their difference of size, but principally from their having or not having slaves. It did not lie between the large and small States: it lay between the Northern and Southern.

James Madison

#5. Everybody knows that Alexander Hamilton was a founding father of the United States, a young father to be sure: only thirty at the time of the Constitutional Convention and just turned thirty-eight when he left behind his brilliant career as Secretary of the Treasury.

Edmund Morgan

#6. Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin

#7. Let the unseen days be. Today is more than enough.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#8. Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

Jon Stewart

#9. Fairness of face is a gift or curse from God. You cannot take credit for it. Your nature, intelligence, and behavior are the true measure of beauty.

Katy Madison

#10. In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we shd. not lose sight of the changes which ages will produce. [James Madison in the U.S. Constitutional Convention, June 26, 1787. The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 1:422.]

James Madison

#11. With mortal age comes the immense need for childish charms. Like a fine wine, sweetens with maturity.

Rae Lori

#12. The United States Constitutional Convention, except for three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary.

Benjamin Franklin

#13. Our Supreme Court is not a court of law. It is a court of conjecture and political fad.

A.E. Samaan

#14. This must be a good book," he wrote in Working Days on June 10, 1938. "It simply must. I haven't any choice. It must be far and away the best thing I have ever attempted - slow but sure, piling detail on detail until a picture and an experience emerge. Until the whole throbbing thing emerges.

John Steinbeck

#15. We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue.

Walter Cronkite

#16. 'Tis done. We have become a nation.

Benjamin Rush

#17. When a Cabinet Minister who is sacked for telling lies is re-appointed, in the face of every constitutional convention, only for the same man to be sacked again from the same Cabinet for the same offence by the same Prime Minister no wonder the public are cynical about politics.

William Hague

#18. Presented memorial to [Constitutional Convention] committee on sufferage. Was very courteously treated. We all felt it a great day in the history of Utah. The committee informed us they had passed on W[oman] S[uffrage] being ten to five in favor.

Ruth May Fox

#19. It would have marked a want of foresight in the convention, which our own experience would have rendered inexcusable.

James Madison

#20. It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one.

Gloria Steinem

#21. If we really want to make progress and achieve greater fairness as a society, it is time for elemental change. And we should start by looking at the Constitution, with the goal of holding a new Constitutional Convention.

Larry J. Sabato