Constitution Quotes

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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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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....

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

The liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which liberty is secured by the equality of restraint. A constitution of things in which the liberty of no one man, and no body of men, and no number of men, can find means to trespass on the liberty of any person, or any description of persons, in the society. This kind of liberty is, indeed, but another name for justice.

Let's see in those indictments you can't level at Sweden, they never tried to ban the constitution or undermine the settlement that they wanted. Well you can't say that of Canada. Any indication of revolt on the part of Quebec was either bought off, with a good deal of corruption.

Men who profess a state of neutrality in times of public danger, desert the common interest of their fellow subjects; and act with independence to that constitution into which they are incorporated. The safety of the whole requires our joint endeavours. When this is at stake, the indifferent are not properly a part of the community; or rather are like dead limbs, which are an encumbrance to the body, instead of being of use to it.

Good intentions will always be pleaded, for every assumption of power; but they cannot justify it... It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended.

At my years, and with my disposition, or rather, constitution, one gets to care less and less for everything except downright goodfeeling. Life is so short, and so ridiculous and irrational (from a certain point of view) that one knows not what to make of it, unless--well, finish the sentence for yourself.

Herman Melville

More than one way for doing the same thing is provided by the natural constitution of the nervous system. This luxury of means of compassing a given combination seems to offer the means of restitution of an act after its impairment or loss in one of its several forms.

Charles Scott Sherrington

The primary function of the government is - and here I am quoting directly from the U.S. Constitution - 'to spew out paper.'

I have little patience with people who take the Bill of Rights for granted. The Bill of Rights, contained in the first ten amendments to the Constitution, is every American's guarantee of freedom.

Harry S. Truman

The bread I eat in London, is a deleterious paste, mixed up with chalk, alum, and bone ashes: insipid to the taste, and destructive to the constitution.

Tobias Smollett