Constitution Quotes
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The right to be let alone is the underlying principle of the Constitution's Bill of Rights.
Erwin Griswold
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What we must remember, however, is that preservation of liberties does not depend on motives. A suppression of liberty has the same effect whether the suppressor be a reformer or an outlaw. The only protection against misguided zeal is constant alertness to infractions of the guarantees of liberty contained in our Constitution. Each surrender of liberty to the demands of the moment makes easier another, larger surrender. . .
William O. Douglas
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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
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I tried to decide each case based on the law and the Constitution.
Sandra Day O'Connor
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Rejection would be a disaster for the U.S., but ratification alone will not end our problems in Iraq. Even if the constitution is ratified, the insurgents are not going to lay down their arms.
Andrew Bacevich
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I believe to my core that there’s only one right way to do this job, and that is with strict independence. By the book. Playing it straight. Faithful to the Constitution. Chris Wray VOWS' STRICT INDEPENDENCE' IN CONFIRMATION HEARING During Tuesday's vote before the full Senate Judiciary Committee, all five nay votes came from liberal Democrats : Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
Christopher Wray
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The Constitution—the Bill of Rights in particular—was filled with “majestic generalities” precisely so that federal courts could breathe life into them as the reality of America changed.
Barry W. Lynn
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The aim of the Constitutional Treaty was to be more readable; the aim of this treaty is to be unreadable ... The Constitution aimed to be clear, whereas this Treaty had to be unclear. It is a success.
Karel De Gucht
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The right to discuss freely and openly, by speech, by the pen, by the press, all political questions, and to examine the animadvert upon all political institutions is a right so clear and certain, so interwoven with our other liberties, so necessary, in fact, to their existence, that without it we must fall into despotism and anarchy.
William Cullen Bryant
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My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr.
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The court is really the keeper of the conscience, and the conscience is the Constitution.
William O. Douglas
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We hold that the Constitution does not forbid the states minor intrusions into an individual's body under stringently limited conditions.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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That is, no matther whether th' constitution follows th' flag or not, th' supreme coort follows th' iliction returns.
Finley Peter Dunne
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Who are we? We are people who love drugs. They say we like drugs. It's true. Especially marijuana. Marijuana has been good for us. God put it here for a reason and we need to find a way to live with it in peace. But we are also people who hate drugs. We have suffered from overdoses and addiction. But we know that drugs are here to stay, and prohibition and the criminal justice system is not the way to deal with it. And we are people who don't care about drugs. People who care about the Constitution, who care about 2.2 million Americans behind bars, who care about fundamental rights and freedoms.
Ethan Nadelmann
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What finally emerges from the 'clear and present danger' cases is a working principle that the substantive evil must be extremely serious and the degree of imminence extremely high before utterances can be punished...It must be taken as a command of the broadest scope that explicit language, read in the context of a liberty-loving society, will allow.
Hugo Black
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But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.
Jane Austen
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The situation of the general government, if it can be called a government, is shaken to its foundation, and liable to be overturned by every blast.
George Washington
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I have, perhaps, a slave-like constitution which is too easily restrained by bonds; it then becomes rebellious and bursts out in a comic revolution.
Saul Bellow
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English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
James Anthony Froude
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
Herbert Spencer
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Our current constitution does indeed concentrate too much power and resources at the centre, which has impeded national development.
Atiku Abubakar
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A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.
John Stuart Mill
