Constitution Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Philadelphia was the first city to foresee the advantages of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a breakfast food.

Christopher Morley

Thank God, under our Constitution there was no connection between church and state.

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the Constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity....

A judge who is a 'strict constructionist' in constitutional matters will generally not be favorably inclined toward claims of either criminal defendants or civil rights plaintiffs—the latter two groups having been the principal beneficiaries of the Supreme Court's 'broad constructionist' reading of the Constitution.

William Rehnquist

The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the Declaration of Independence says.

In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. It's not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other.

The idea which pervades our Constitution; that all men of every race are equal before the laws.

No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.

John Stuart Mill

Twenty years will produce all the mischief that can be apprehended from the liberty to import slaves. So long a term will be more dishonorable to the National character than to say nothing about it in the Constitution.

The first lesson, for all Canadians, is that the closed door, top down approaches to constitution making do not provide the public input or debate necessary to achieve a constitutional consensus that will be supported by the people.

Preston Manning

I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.

In a public hearing, when the other part was 'quoting the fifth amendment':

You are not reading the Constitution. You are reading someone's interpretation; is that correct?

Richard Friederich Arens

The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders' political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs.

Fellow citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies, I refuse to take this oath. I deny the power of this Convention to speak for Texas.... I protest.... against all the acts and doings of this convention and I declare them null and void

One has to look at the fundamental nature of the clerical regime in order to understand its true and ultimate intentions. Since its advent in 1979, the regime's leaders – starting with Khomeini himself – set out to export their radical ideology to the region and beyond. The primary mission (raison d'être) of the regime is to convert other regimes to its own mold with the goal of establish a modern-day Islamic Shi'ite Caliphate. It is so stated and defined in its Constitution as well as that of the Pasdaran's (Revolutionary Guards).

Property is robbery! That is the war-cry of '93! That is the signal of revolutions!
Reader, calm yourself: I am no agent of discord, no firebrand of sedition. I anticipate history by a few days; I disclose a truth whose development we may try in vain to arrest; I write the preamble of our future constitution. This proposition which seems to you blasphemous — property is robbery — would, if our prejudices allowed us to consider it, be recognized as the lightning-rod to shield us from the coming thunderbolt; but too many interests stand in the way! … Alas! philosophy will not change the course of events: destiny will fulfill itself regardless of prophecy. Besides, must not justice be done and our education be finished?

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

He swore not to stake another sou. Only this oath and his healthy constitution freed him from sleeplessness, which sits at the bedhead of all gamblers.

Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.

The Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation. It has no authority or obligation at all, unless as a contract between man and man. And it does not so much as even purport to be a contract between persons now existing.

Lysander Spooner

I put Huong, I put Duong Van Minh like uh... chief of state. I put Huong, I put Quat, Quat on the prime minister role. Anytime we feel that they do not answer, I mean, deal with the situation we change them. They are not a coup. Either Quat, either Huong, or Minh does not come in office with election with the power, with the population, you know. The people give him the mandate to be prime minister, or to be, to be uh chief state. The mandate it coming from the armed forces at that time before we have any constitution, you know, uh set up later on. So, when we change a government it's not a coup. We just change somebody what we just want to put in. That's all.

So that was the basic issue. Once the ballots had been decided, Lincoln said the only recourse must be through future elections in which the minority can try to become the majority; but there can be no right to reject the results of an election conducted under the rules of the Constitution.

We cannot simply speak out against an escalation of troops in Iraq, we must act to prevent it... There can be no doubt that the Constitution gives Congress the authority to decide whether to fund military action, and Congress can demand a justification from the president for such action before it appropriates the funds to carry it out.

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

William Howard Taft

Value has its own logic. In the constitutional state that is most clearly recognizable in the enactment of its constitution.