A Quote by Harlan F. Stone
Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.
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Every single person in the government swears an oath to the very same constitution, to abide by the laws in pursuance of this constitution, and they all have the responsibility to follow its plain words....If a judge makes a ruling that is contrary to the plain words of the Constitution, then it's not law, it's just his bad opinion!
No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words "no" and "not" employed in restraint of government power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.
Narrowness of experience leads to narrowness of imagination
The men of the clique live together because they have the same kind of soul, and their narrowness is a narrowness of spiritual coherence and contentment, like that which exists in hell . . .
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.
Now individual consciousness, as typified in human beings, has great advantages and great disadvantages. Individuality means a narrowing, and narrowness can be useful. It is good for close-up work. We have invented the magnifying glass and the microscope to narrow our vision, because narrowness makes for precision. But narrowness also makes for a failure of purpose, for exhaustion of the will; for purpose depends upon a broad vision, a clear sight of one's objective.
Reading is a pleasure, yes, but not without effort: choosing to read novels purely because they mirror your own experience is stultifying.
For me, the optimum circumstances for writing a book are those of stultifying routine.
Master those books you have. Read them thoroughly. Bathe in them until they saturate you. Read and re-read them...digest them...a student will find that his mental constitution is more affected by one book thoroughly mastered than by 20 books he has merely skimmed.
We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For 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.
I think the president, very simply, has never read a copy of the Constitution. I think that that's true. He's just never bothered to read the Constitution, and he just has no understanding and appreciation of the First Amendment's protections for freedom of speech.
If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.
I'm in love with this country called "America." I'm a huge fan of America. I'm one of those annoying fans - you know, the ones that read the cd notes and follow you into bathrooms and ask you all kinds of annoying questions about why you didn't live up to that. I'm that kind of fan. I've read the Declaration of Independence, and I've read the Constitution of the United States, and they are some liner notes, dude.
In explaining the Constitution, James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 45: 'The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peach, negotiation, and foreign commerce.' Has the Constitution been amended to permit Congress to tax, spend and regulate as it pleases or have Americans said, 'To hell with the Constitution'?
The Constitution I uphold and defend is the one I carry in my pocket all the time, the U.S. Constitution. I don't know what Constitution that other members of Congress uphold, but it's not this one. I think the only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution, not this one.
The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the Constitution.
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