Constitution Quotes
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Every generation gets the Constitution that it deserves. As the central preoccupations of an era make their way into the legal system, the Supreme Court eventually weighs in, and nine lawyers in robes become oracles of our national identity.
Noah Feldman
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John Adams, second president of the United States, wrote that our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.... George Washington warned us never to indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
Joe Lieberman
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The Constitution favors no racial group - no political or social group.
William O. Douglas
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No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.
Herbert Spencer
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If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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The Bolivian government has promised to guarantee autonomy in the framework of unity, legality, and with the goal of equalizing the different regions of Bolivia. It's right there in the constitution.
Evo Morales
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The Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People is sacredly obligatory upon all.
George Washington
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The present Constitution, with a few alterations of a trifling nature, is just as good as we want; and if it is sustained on this land of Joseph, it will be done by us and our posterity.
Brigham Young
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Whether interpreting the Constitution or filling in the blanks of a law or a regulation, every word of the court's opinion can widen or narrow our rights as Americans and either protect us or leave us more vulnerable to any winds that blow.
Herb Kohl
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The Constitution has never treated religion as merely another private opinion that government can order people to keep to themselves.
Josh Hawley
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Jefferson, though the secret vote was still unknown at the time had at least a foreboding of how dangerous it might be to allow the people to share a public power without providing them at the same time with more public space than the ballot box and with more opportunity to make their voices heard in public than on election day. What he perceived to be the mortal danger to the republic was that the Constitution had given all power to the citizens, without giving them the opportunity of being citizens and of acting as citizens.
Hannah Arendt
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We need to finally be proactive in enlightening people from Islamic cultural groups. And this applies to immigrants already here as well as to current refugees. The German constitution stands above the Sharia. Schools need to offer classes on gender equality. You also have to offer an alternative to young men with a penchant for violence.
Alice Schwarzer
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The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation.
Hugo Black
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The thing that distinguishes America is that it is a republican form of government - anything that is not outlawed or specifically barred or regulated by the Constitution is LEGAL.
Bernard von NotHaus
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When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans, it was assumed that the Americans who had that freedom would use it responsibly.
Bill Clinton
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A conflict of values is not a misunderstanding. Islamic orthodoxy and the German constitution are not compatible.
Bassam Tibi
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The first ten amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments-Legislative, Executive, and Judicial.
Hugo Black
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When all is said and done, the Constitution of the United States is a set of words on a piece of paper. The only way that the Constitution can protect us is if we protect the Constitution.
Thomas Sowell
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Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.
Walter Tevis
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The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.
Hugo Black
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Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.
Melissa Bean
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To the security of a free Constitution it [knowledge] contributes in various ways: by teaching the people themselves to know and to value their own rights, to discern and provide against invasions of them, to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority, between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of society.
George Washington
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The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.
William J. Brennan, Jr.
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Some of those who crafted the Constitution had serious doubts about tax-supported clergy. James Madison, for example, wrote that such employment was a “palpable violation of equal rights as well as Constitutional principles” and a “national establishment” of religion.10 He suggested that if Congress wanted chaplains to discharge religious duties, members should pay for them from their own pockets. “How just would it be in its principle!” he proclaimed.
Barry W. Lynn