Top 1200 British Constitution Quotes & Sayings

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

even the best of constitutions need sometimes to be amended and improved, for after all there is but one constitution which is infallible, but one constitution that ought to be held sacred, and that is the human constitution.

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

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 education I received was a British education, in which British ideas, British culture, British institutions, were automatically assumed to be superior. There was no such thing as African culture.

As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.

British audiences are toughest on British films. So often, a British film is the last thing they want to see. If you please them, you really know you've made an impact.

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

I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.

I grew up in a very British family who had been transplanted to Canada, and my grandmother's house was filled with English books. I was a very early reader, so I was really brought up being surrounded with piles of British books and British newspapers, British magazines. I developed a really great love of England.

The King has a right to make political remarks. He is a Thai citizen and has his rights and freedoms under the Constitution. Each of you is under the Constitution, and so is the King. I am using my freedom under the Constitution.

Reform and exchange in English poetry are as slow as in the British constitution itself.

The British press hate a winner who's British. They don't like any British man to have balls as big as a cow's like I have.

It has been believed for a long time in Japan that things such as the constitution can never be changed. I say we should change our constitution now. The U.S. has amended its constitution six times, but Japan has done it zero times.

The Constitution is constant. There's not one elected official who has the power to change it. There is a way to amend the Constitution, and the Constitution spells out the procedures that must be taken to change it. Presidents cannot. Now, I know this is gonna shock many of you in the low-information community.

Progressivism is the cancer in America, and it is eating our Constitution. It was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.

Are we reading the Constitution and pondering it? Are we aware of its principles? Are we abiding by these principles and teaching them to others? Could we defend the Constitution? Can we recognize when a law is constitutionally unsound? Do we know what the prophets have said about the Constitution and the threats to it?

'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me.

Within the constitution there is the word "referendum." You can change the constitution by referendum. But we have not yet called for a referendum. As of today, we have not yet organized any meeting or discussions on how to change the constitution.

Few realise that English poetry is rather like the British constitution, surrounded by pompous precedents and reverences.

[The Massachusetts constitution] resembles the federal Constitution of 1787 more closely than any of the other revolutionary state constitutions. It was also drawn up by a special convention, and it provided for popular ratification - practices that were followed by the drafters of the federal Constitution of 1787 and subsequent state constitution-makers.

If we do not get a universal acceptance of the constitution the likelihood of the violence continuing is there. If it had been an inclusive exercise -- as when everybody had embraced the constitution and everyone saw his interest protected by the constitution -- I think it would have been a rallying exercise. We are not there at this stage

Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or yen for others.

If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.

Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has 'grown'.

Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.

The US Constitution serves the same function as the British royal family: it offers a comforting symbol of tradition and continuity, thereby masking a radical change in the actual system of power.

Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution, and it was designed to eat the Constitution, to progress past the Constitution.

If you sit down with British officers or British senior NCOs, they understand the sweep of history. They know the history of British forces not just in Afghanistan but the history of British successful counter-insurgencies - Northern Ireland, Malaysia.

I feel that the constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.

A lot of the time, the British press make me ashamed and embarrassed to be British. They give others the impression that the British are selfish, envious and bitter people, which is simply not true in my opinion. I think that British people in general are really nice and friendly.

Well British pension funds have not been investing the savings of British people in British infrastructure.

The American Constitution declares 'All men are born equal.' The British Socialist Party add: 'All men must be kept equal'.

The strength of the British constitution is supposedly its ability, because it is unwritten in key respects like the incapacity of the prime minister, to adapt to crises with flexibility and urgency.

Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.

the twelve or fifteen millions in the British Empire, who, while they possess no electoral rights, are yet persuaded they are freemen, and who are mystified into the notion that they are not political bondmen, by that great juggle of the ' English Constitution ' a thing of monopolies, and Church-craft, and sinecures, armorial hocus-pocus, primogeniture, and pageantry!

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.

This constitution is full of mines that are going to explode. The articles stipulated in this constitution will have grave consequences if they are submitted to a referendum. This constitution will lead to a weak Iraq that is unable to defend itself.

The Constitution is not a law, but it empowers the people to make laws... The Constitution tells us what shall not be a lawful tender... The legislature has ceded up to us the privilege of enacting such laws as are not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States... The different states, and even Congress itself, have passed many laws diametrically contrary to the Constitution of the United States.

It seems to me that the Conservatives neither recognise the scale of the living standards crisis facing British families nor offer credible answers as to how the British economy or British society can be better in the future.

[T]he Constitution ought to be the standard of construction for the laws, and that wherever there is an evident opposition, the laws ought to give place to the Constitution. But this doctrine is not deducible from any circumstance peculiar to the plan of convention, but from the general theory of a limited Constitution.

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!

We think of the revolution ending in Yorktown, Va. The fact of the matter is that the French defeated the British in a naval battle right in the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. Because the British fleet was coming to rescue Cornwallis, the British general, Washington was able to surround Cornwallis.

I know Im British. I havent spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasnt British, what would I be? I am British.

I know I'm British. I haven't spent much time in the U.K., but my parents are British, my family heritage is British, so if I wasn't British, what would I be? I am British.

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 laws are, and ought to be, relative to the constitution, and not the constitution to the laws. A constitution is the organization of offices in a state, and determines what is to be the governing body, and what is the end of each community. But laws are not to be confounded with the principles of the constitution; they are the rules according to which the magistrates should administer the state, and proceed against offenders.

The law, in this country, is dead. The Supreme Court doesn't follow the Constitution, Congress doesn't follow the Constitution. The President doesn't even want to follow the Constitution. And yet we're the ones called radical.

Technically it was a victory for the British, who attacked the patriot fortifications but a Pyrrhic victory if ever there was: out of 2,200 British soldiers 1,034 were killed or wounded, including one in nine of all the officers the British lost in the whole war.

Clearly what differentiates the U.S. from other countries is the U.S. Constitution. The Constitution defines us as a people. Without the Constitution, we would be a different country. Therefore, to lose the Constitution is to lose the country.

I firmly believe that the Constitution is the most powerful challenge to illiberal tendencies. If the Constitution is followed in letter and spirit and if the laws are made in the spirit in which Constitution was made, liberties can indeed be protected.

[The] government has room to scale back individual rights during wartime without violating the Constitution. The Constitution just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go way beyond what the Constitution requires.

[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.

The British constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.

I think frustration unfortunately, reflects a real breakdown in the political parties themselves, which is fascinating because our constitution did not anticipate political parties. They're not even written in the Constitution, there's no guidelines. When we look at the arcane processes of delegate selection in the primaries and caucuses, it's not in the Constitution. This is all created post Constitution. And yet I think we're in the middle of tensions between and within the political parties. They're not functioning that well.

And it is undeniably true that the greatest and most important right of a British subject is that he shall be governed by no laws but those to which he, either in person or by his representatives, hath given his consent; and this, I will venture to assert, is the great basis of British freedom; it is interwoven with the Constitution, and whenever this is lost, the Constitution must be destroyed.

British people are surprised that I'm British! It's extraordinary, I get tweets every day from British people saying, 'I had no idea you were British.'

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

A 'living constitution' is a dead constitution, because it does not do the one and only thing a written constitution is supposed to do: provide parameters around the power of officials.

It has been more than 60 years since the constitution was put in place. There are provisions in the constitution that no longer suit the times. Since the constitution was promulgated, we've seen the emergence of new values, such as privacy, the environment and so on, which need to be incorporated.