John Marshall Short Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

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The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

John Marshall
We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.

John Marshall
Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

John Marshall
What is it that makes us trust our judges? Their independence in office and manner of appointment.

John Marshall
A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.

John Marshall
[The] government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men.

John Marshall
Seldom has a battle, in which greater numbers were
not engaged, been so important in its consequences as that of Cowpens.

John Marshall
The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

John Marshall
The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their own will, and lives only by their will.

John Marshall
A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.

John Marshall
The acme of judicial distinction means the ability to look a lawyer straight in the eye for two hours and not hear a damned word he says.

John Marshall
The law does not expect a man to be prepared to defend every act of his life which may be suddenly and without notice alleged against him.

John Marshall
In a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.

John Marshall
Have no power, by taxation or otherwise, to retard, impede, burden or in any manner control the operations of the constitutional laws enacted by Congress.

John Marshall
No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States and compounding the American people into one common mass.

John Marshall