Quotes About The Framers Of The Constitution

#1. 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

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

Brigham Young

#3. 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

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

Joe Jamail

#5. 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

#6. 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

#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. 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

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

Sandra Day O'Connor

#10. 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

#11. 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

#12. 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

#13. [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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Garry Wills

#18. 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

#19. 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

#20. 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

#21. 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

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

Byron Goines

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

Walter E. Williams

#24. 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

#25. 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

#26. 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

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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