Best 592 quotes in «constitution quotes» category

Force is the essence of all positive governmental institutions. Under any conceivable interpretation of Jefferson's talk about the consent of the governed, every existing government is outlawed beyond recovery, and the "just powers" vanish into thin air.

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.

For in the end laws are just words on a page - words that are sometimes malleable, opaque, as dependent on context and trust as they are in a story or poem or promise to someone, words whose meanings are subject to erosion, sometimes collapsing in the blink of an eye.

Hatumtaki kiongozi anayeishi katika mifuko ya mafisadi, tunamtaka kiongozi anayeishi katika ibara za katiba ya nchi. Kitambi bila Yesu ni jipu.

Fourth, resistance, as it has unfolded over the centuries, has claimed a “public commons” for “we the people” to have a voice in shaping the de- fining issues in our most trying times—beyond the thirty-nine wealthy white men who signed our Constitution. This means beyond elections.

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

If the political left weren't so joyless, humorless, intrusive, taxing, over-taxing, anarchistic, controlling, rudderless, chaos-prone, pedantic, unrealistic, hypocritical, clueless, politically correct, angry, cruel, sanctimonious, retributive, redistributive, intolerant, and if the political left wasn't hell-bent on expansion of said unpleasantness into all aspects of my family's life the truth is: I would not be in your life. If the democratic party were run by Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh, if it had the slightest vestige of JFK and Henry "Scoop" Jackson I wouldn't be on the political map. If the American media were run by biased but not evil Tim Russert and David Brinkley types I wouldn't have joined the fight. You would not know who I am. The left made me do it, I swear, I am a reluctant cultural warrior.

If a separation of the states ever should take place, it will be on some occasion when one portion of the country undertakes to control, to regulate and to sacrifice the interest of another.

In a democracy government is the God.

in a constitutionally ordered state, where laws are derived from broad principles of right and wrong and where those principles are enshrined and protected by agreed upon procedures and practices, it can never be in the long-term interest of the state or its citizens to flout those procedures at home or associate too closely overseas with the enemies of your founding ideals.

I do not believe in equality of results. I believe in "equal opportunity" and "equality before the law".

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.]

In dictatorship people feared the king, in democracy they fear criticism.

[I]n my own case at least I feel my professional need for freedom of speech and expression prejudices me toward a government whose constitution guarantees it.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. - Sixth Amendment, United States Constitution

In her mind, her actions were treason to the false federation, but loyalty to the real United States of America, the one created by a document she had memorized. The real document was set on fire by what the news called "petty arsons" when the National Archives burned down. Bev knew better—she knew who was behind the destruction of the country's most important document. It was more than a document, it was a symbol—a symbol of freedom from tyranny, and one the Federal Government could no longer afford to abide by.

It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation.

In light of the unbroken record of invoking God's name in foundational documents throughout the world, throughout the colonies, and throughout history, the stubborn refusal of the US Constitution to invoke the Almighty is abnormal, historic, radical, and not accidental. But liberals miss a basic point, too: The framers of the Constitution were not contemplating the role of "government" in religion. They were debating the role of the national government in religion.

It is not only the unit vote for the Presidency we are talking about, but a whole solar system of governmental power. If it is proposed to change the balance of power of one of the elements of the solar system, it is necessary to consider the others.

[The answer of Solon to the question 'Which is the most perfect popular government?'] That where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.

It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American

It was the general opinion of ancient nations, that the divinity alone was adequate to the important office of giving laws to men... and modern nations, in the consecrations of kings, and in several superstitious chimeras of divine rights in princes and nobles, are nearly unanimous in preserving remnants of it... Is the jealousy of power, and the envy of superiority, so strong in all men, that no considerations of public or private utility are sufficient to engage their submission to rules for their own happiness? Or is the disposition to imposture so prevalent in men of experience, that their private views of ambition and avarice can be accomplished only by artifice? — … There is nothing in which mankind have been more unanimous; yet nothing can be inferred from it more than this, that the multitude have always been credulous, and the few artful. The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature: and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. As Copley painted Chatham, West, Wolf, and Trumbull, Warren and Montgomery; as Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, and Humphries composed their verse, and Belknap and Ramzay history; as Godfrey invented his quadrant, and Rittenhouse his planetarium; as Boylston practised inoculation, and Franklin electricity; as Paine exposed the mistakes of Raynal, and Jefferson those of Buffon, so unphilosophically borrowed from the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Américains those despicable dreams of de Pauw — neither the people, nor their conventions, committees, or sub-committees, considered legislation in any other light than ordinary arts and sciences, only as of more importance. Called without expectation, and compelled without previous inclination, though undoubtedly at the best period of time both for England and America, to erect suddenly new systems of laws for their future government, they adopted the method of a wise architect, in erecting a new palace for the residence of his sovereign. They determined to consult Vitruvius, Palladio, and all other writers of reputation in the art; to examine the most celebrated buildings, whether they remain entire or in ruins; compare these with the principles of writers; and enquire how far both the theories and models were founded in nature, or created by fancy: and, when this should be done, as far as their circumstances would allow, to adopt the advantages, and reject the inconveniences, of all. Unembarrassed by attachments to noble families, hereditary lines and successions, or any considerations of royal blood, even the pious mystery of holy oil had no more influence than that other of holy water: the people universally were too enlightened to be imposed on by artifice; and their leaders, or more properly followers, were men of too much honour to attempt it. Thirteen governments thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favour of the rights of mankind. [Preface to 'A Defence of the Constitutions of the United States of America', 1787]

It’s not just absolute power that the Founders sought to prevent. Implicit in its structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad. The Founders may have trusted in God, but true to the Enlightenment spirit, they also trusted in the minds and senses that God had given them. They were suspicious of abstraction and liked asking questions, which is why at every turn in our early history theory yielded to fact and necessity.

I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy... But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head... The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you. From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.

Nothing is more likely than that [the] enumeration of powers is defective. This is the ordinary case of all human works. Let us then go on perfecting it by adding by way of amendment to the Constitution those powers which time and trial show are still wanting

On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.

it was impossible to confine a Government to the exercise of express powers; there must necessarily be admitted powers by implication, unless the Constitution descended to recount every minutia

I will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. It is not the Constitution as I would like to have it, but as it is, that is to be defended. The Constitution will not be preserved & defended until it is enforced & obeyed in every part of every one of the United States. It must be so respected, obeyed, enforced and defended, and let the grass grow where it may.

Most Romans believed that their system of government was the finest political invention of the human mind. Change was inconceivable. Indeed, the constitution's various parts were so mutually interdependent that reform within the rules was next to impossible. As a result, radicals found that they had little choice other than to set themselves beyond and against the law. This inflexibility had disastrous consequences as it became increasingly clear that the Roman state was incapable of responding adequately to the challenges it faced. Political debate became polarized into bitter conflicts, with radical outsiders trying to press change on conservative insiders who, in the teeth of all the evidence, believed that all was for the best under the best of all possible constitutions (16).

No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law … - Fifth Amendment, United States Constitution

Ordinary democracy elect its leaders from their words not from their work.

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence". — Mapp vs. Ohio

Or I remember in 1987, when there was a big hoopla about the bicentennial of the Constitution, the Boston Globe published one of my favorite polls, in which they gave people little slogans and said, "Guess which ones are in the Constitution." Of course, nobody knows what's in the Constitution, because everybody forgot what they learned in third grade, and probably they didn't pay any attention to it then anyway―so what the question really was asking is, "What is such an obvious truism that it must be in the Constitution?" Well, one of the suggestions was, "What about 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'?" [a slogan from Karl Marx]. Half the American population thinks that's in the Constitution, because it's such an obvious truth―it's so obviously true that it must be in the Constitution, where else could it come from?

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

Our civil and criminal codes reflect at many points the spirit of the Mosaic. In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?

Politics should be for people, politics shouldn't be for politicians.

Privacy as a fundamental right allows a person to prohibit, regulate, and take other actions against any actual and/or foreseeable intrusions into his privacy, and this fundamental, constitutional right will trump any statutory right or limitation unless he high standards for making exceptions are met.

Progressives did not like the antiquated thinking that saw the Constitution as a barrier to government expansion. The "living Constitution" was born. That benign-sounding phrase (coined later) was conjured up to justify changing the Constitution, without formal amendment, from a limit on power to a blank check. What was impermissible to the federal government by an earlier interpretation became permissible once the Constitution was construed as a evolving document. But by that philosophy, the Constitution is no limit on government power at all. A constitutional government that defines its own powers is a contradiction in terms.

Soma kila kitu, hata katiba.

Our Constitution’s separation of church and state never meant that religion could have nothing to do with the governing of our nation. The Founders simply intended that the United States would not have an established state religion and that no one could be sanctioned by the state for being of the wrong faith. Separation of church and state does not mean, as many people inside government believe today, that religion can never be discussed when investigating a threat or interrogating a suspect. And it definitely does not mean that a subject under surveillance as a threat to American lives cannot be recorded or otherwise monitored when he steps into a mosque. If someone is suspected of being a terrorist, it matters not whether he steps into a mosque, a church, or a temple; he is still a threat and should be treated as such.

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.

Puzzle pieces, people and their gifts seek to fit in stay true to your self; don’t cram or trim.

Quote from Ranger Captain David Craig, character in Voice in the Wilderness, page 187: “If the House and the Senate had the guts to stick to it [Constitution], and we could trust SCOTUS to uphold it, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

The answer of Solon on the question, 'Which is the most perfect popular govemment,' has never been exceeded by any man since his time, as containing a maxim of political morality, 'That,' says he, 'where the least injury done to the meanest individual, is considered as an insult on the whole constitution.

Serikali inayodhulumu wananchi wake ni hatari kuliko simba.

The beauty of a society is not just in the laws upon which the society revolves, but how the society regards, upholds and obeys the laws which set boundaries for a beautiful and a harmonious society!

The advantages of a hereditary Monarchy are self-evident. Without some such method of prescriptive, immediate and automatic succession, an interregnum intervenes, rival claimants arise, continuity is interrupted and the magic lost. Even when Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; even when the menace of dynastic conflicts had receded in to the coloured past; even when kingship had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms; the principle of hereditary Monarchy continued to furnish the State with certain specific and inimitable advantages. Apart from the imponderable, but deeply important, sentiments and affections which congregate around an ancient and legitimate Royal Family, a hereditary Monarch acquires sovereignty by processes which are wholly different from those by which a dictator seizes, or a President is granted, the headship of the State. The King personifies both the past history and the present identity of the Nation as a whole. Consecrated as he is to the service of his peoples, he possesses a religious sanction and is regarded as someone set apart from ordinary mortals. In an epoch of change, he remains the symbol of continuity; in a phase of disintegration, the element of cohesion; in times of mutability, the emblem of permanence. Governments come and go, politicians rise and fall: the Crown is always there. A legitimate Monarch moreover has no need to justify his existence, since he is there by natural right. He is not impelled as usurpers and dictators are impelled, either to mesmerise his people by a succession of dramatic triumphs, or to secure their acquiescence by internal terrorism or by the invention of external dangers. The appeal of hereditary Monarchy is to stability rather than to change, to continuity rather than to experiment, to custom rather than to novelty, to safety rather than to adventure. The Monarch, above all, is neutral. Whatever may be his personal prejudices or affections, he is bound to remain detached from all political parties and to preserve in his own person the equilibrium of the realm. An elected President – whether, as under some constitutions, he be no more than a representative functionary, or whether, as under other constitutions, he be the chief executive – can never inspire the same sense of absolute neutrality. However impartial he may strive to become, he must always remain the prisoner of his own partisan past; he is accompanied by friends and supporters whom he may seek to reward, or faced by former antagonists who will regard him with distrust. He cannot, to an equal extent, serve as the fly-wheel of the State.

The Bill of Rights wasn’t enacted to give us any rights. It was enacted so the Government could not take away from us any rights that we already had.

The composition of the oligarchy of government [...] emerges as the dominant theme of political history [...] ; it is something real and tangible, whatever may be the name or theory of the constitution.

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