Ratified Quotes

#1. 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

#2. To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

William James

#3. Each state in the Union is honored in the order of when it ratified the Constitution and became a part of the United States. This September it is Iowa's turn. Iowa became the 29th state to be admitted to the union on December 28, 1846.

Leonard Boswell

#4. If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.

George Will

#5. Without the basis in written law, and without the basis in our Constitution ratified by the people, judges can't make laws. And if we accept the notion that their dictates are law, then we have not only submitted to tyranny, we have abandoned a republican form of government.

Alan Keyes

#6. Rejection would be a disaster for the U.S., but ratification alone will not end our problems in Iraq. Even if the constitution is ratified, the insurgents are not going to lay down their arms.

Andrew Bacevich

#7. If passed by the U.N. and ratified by the U.S. Senate, the U.N. Small Arms Treaty would almost certainly force the United States to ... create an international gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun confiscation.

Paul Broun

#8. The Government have made it clear that the constitutional treaty will be ratified in the UK only after a referendum.

Geoff Hoon

#9. What government supports, government controls. This is an ancient axiom repeatedly ratified by experience ... Indeed, as is well known, acceptance of tax aid has led to the secularization of many church-related colleges and universities.

Edd Doerr

#10. The self-help books and websites haven't come up with a proper title for spouses living in the purgatory that exists before the courts have officially ratified your personal tragedy.

Jonathan Tropper

#11. First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified,
nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country.

George W. Bush

#12. Be stern in the council-chamber, [Show no weakness, and insist on your plans being ratified by the sovereign.] so that you may control the situation.

Sun Tzu

#13. Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they're ratified into law.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#14. When the START 2 treaty has been implemented - and remember it has not yet been ratified - we will be left with some 15,000 nuclear warheads, active and in reserve. Fifteen thousand weapons with an average yield of 20 Hiroshima bombs.

Joseph Rotblat

#15. The Court is making the preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment.

Ted Cruz

#16. I entirely concur in the propriety of restoring to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is a legitimate constitution. And, if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for consistent and stable government.

James Madison

#17. Although member countries ratified the UN's millennium goals, fighting enemies represents by far the biggest allocation of most countries' resources.

Joyce F Benenson

#18. Even though it runs counter to popular belief, Life's critical decisions are usually made in the heart and only later ratified by the brain.

Mardy Grothe

#19. 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

#20. Mandela's commitment to democracy was ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power

Barack Obama

#21. Agreements. Specifically, a treaty ratified by all the orders of whimsical like forms who dwell here that affords a measure of security for mortal caretakers. In a world where mortal man has become the dominant force, most creatures of enchantment have fled to refuges like this one.

Brandon Mull

#22. It ratified a theory of mine that great writing could sneak up on you, master of a thousand disguises: prodigal kinsman, messenger boy, class clown, commander of artillery, altar boy, lace maker, exiled king, peacemaker, or moon goddess.

Pat Conroy

#23. Love it or hate it, Obamacare is the law of the land. It was passed by Congress, signed into law by President Obama, declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court and ratified by a majority of Americans, who reelected the president for a second term.

Hank Johnson

#24. Mark Anthony had established ascendance the day before by springing claws like flick knives and hissing like a maddened cobra. Dirk had rolled on his back and ratified the peace treaty before the ink was dry, like a dog of sense.

Victoria Clayton

#25. The E.U. is founded on the Treaties which apply only to the Member States who have agreed and ratified them.

Jose Manuel Barroso

#26. The federal government is often said in militia circles to have made wholesale seizures of power, at times by subterfuge. A leading grievance holds that the 16th Amendment, which authorizes the federal income tax, was ratified through fraud.

Barton Gellman

#27. Kyoto was a flawed process. There isn't one industrialized country around the world that has ratified that treaty, and so that is a non-starter.

Andrew Card

#28. No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum

David Cameron

#29. Home is one's birthplace, ratified by memory.

Henry Anatole Grunwald

#30. My greatest disappointment in all the projects I worked on during the White House years was the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified ... Why all the controversy and why such difficulty in giving women the protection of the Constitution that should have been theirs long ago?

Rosalynn Carter

#31. 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

#32. I felt uneasy about making the rapid decisions I have always made, and wondered whether every decision should be formally ratified and minuted at a board meeting.

Richard Branson