Constitution Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and association of latent causes, which have been long before predestinated.

Quintus Curtius Rufus

Under the freest constitution ignorant people are still slaves.

Nicolas de Condorcet

The Republican Party recognizes the right of the majority to govern, and their power to enforce that right against all attempts at disunion, come from what quarter they may. It is based upon the great fundamental principle upon which the National Government rests, that the Constitution, and all laws made in pursuance thereof, are to be faithfully observed and enforced, and it demands economy and a rigid accountability on the part of all public officers.

Elbridge G. Spaulding

I dream of helping liberate my homeland from this transient medieval system of clerical rule. It is the Iranian people whose dream and decision will determine the final form of our future constitution and government. Having said that, and in view of my homelands culture and history, I am confident that a modern constitutional monarchy, similar to that of Japan, Spain, UK and Sweden, will be perfectly capable in institutionalizing democracy and help usher in modernity, progress and development.

He (Donald Trump) was speaking specifically to the reports that the father (Khizr M. Khan), who is a strong proponent of Sharia Law. And actually writing about it and how the Constitution should be subordinate to Sharia Law.

Katrina Pierson

Although Aristotle may have been right to claim that a desire to know is part of the fundamental constitution of human nature, … Nietzsche is also correct to emphasize that the impulse to evaluate our surroundings, our fellows, and ourselves is at least as deeply rooted in our human nature as is any natural "desire to know." "Der Mensch ist ein abschätzendes Tier."

While other men were peacefully following their vocations and extending their interests they [the Saints in Clay County] have been deprived of the right of citizenship, prevented from enjoying their own, charged with violating the sacred principles of our Constitution and laws.

Joseph Smith, Jr.

At school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed; hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding.

Mary Wollstonecraft

I am committed against every thing which in my judgment, may weaken, endanger, or destroy (the Constitution)... and especially against all extension of Executive power; and I am committed against any attempt to rule the free people of this country by the power and the patronage of the Government itself....

A man ought to inquire and find out what he really and truly has an appetite for; what suits his constitution; and that, doctors tell him, is the very thing he ought to have in general. And so with books.

The Constitution of the United States knows no distinction between citizens on account of color. Neither does it know any difference between a citizen of a state and a citizen of the United States.

Frederick Douglass

One would expect that any interference with such a complicated piece of chemical machinery as the genetic constitution would result in damage. And, in fact, this is so: the great majority of mutant genes are harmful in their effects on the organism.

Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.

A judicial activist is a judge who interprets the Constitution to mean what it would have said if he, instead of the Founding Fathers, had written it.

To an important extent, indeed, scientific research has become the secular religion of materialistic society; and it is somewhat paradoxical that a country whose constitution enforces the strict separation of church and state should have contributed so much public money to the establishment and propagation of scientific pessimism.

Harry Gordon Johnson

We cannot sanction the view that the Constitution, while solicitous of the cognitive content of individual speech, has little or no regard for that emotive function which, practically speaking, may often be the more important element of the overall message sought to be communicated.

John Marshall Harlan II

Disease is a series of new and extraordinary actions. Each link in the series is essentially to the integrity of the whole. Let one link be fairly broken, and this integrity is spoiled; and there is an end of the disease; and then the constitution is left to resume its old and accustomed actions, which are the actions of health.

Peter Mere Latham

Logic, like language, is partly a free construction and partly a means of symbolizing and harnessing in expression the existing diversities of things; and whilst some languages, given a man's constitution and habits, may seem more beautiful and convenient to him than others, it is a foolish heat in a patriot to insist that only his native language is intelligible or right.

George Santayana

The Hungarian ministry begged the king earnestly to issue orders to all troops and commanders of fortresses in Hungary, enjoining fidelity to the Constitution, and obedience to the ministers of Hungary.

Essentially only one thing in life interests us: our psychical constitution, the mechanism of which was and is wrapped in darkness. All human resources, art, religion, literature, philosophy and historical sciences, all of them join in bringing light in this darkness.

No man can delegate,... any right of arbitrary dominion over a 3rd person; for that would imply a right in the 1st person, not only to make the 3rd person his slave, but also a right to dispose of him as a slave to still other persons. Any contract to do this is necessarily a criminal one...To call such a contract a constitution does not at all lessen its criminality, or add to its validity.

Lysander Spooner

I have lived among negroes, all my life, and I am for this Government with slavery under the Constitution as it is. I am for the Government of my fathers with negroes. I am for it without negroes. Before I would see this Government destroyed I would send every negro back to Africa, disintegrated and blotted out of space

Ours is a representative republic with a Constitution in which is recognized the natural law and the natural rights of man. It is a republic with a spiritual foundation characterized by freedom - freedom for the individual and for his society.

Ezra Taft Benson

The conditions of city life may be made healthy, so far as the physical constitution is concerned; but there is connected with the business of the city so much competition, so much rivalry, so much necessity for industry, that I think it is a perpetual, chronic, wholesale violation of natural law. There are ten men that can succeed in the country, where there is one that can succeed in the city.

Henry Ward Beecher

Because the bill in reserving a certain parcel of land in the United States for the use of said Baptist Church comprises a principle and a precedent for the appropriation of funds of the United States for the use and support of religious societies, contrary to the article of the Constitution which declares that "Congress shall make no law respecting a religious establishment."