Top 1200 Constitution Quotes & Sayings

The Constitution provided no protection against corporations; the Constitution has a blind spot for them.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 don't think the Constitution is studied almost anywhere, including law schools. In law schools, what they study is what the court said about the Constitution. They study the opinions. They don't study the Constitution itself.

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.

I am a forthright defender of the right to bear arms - which is guaranteed not only by the U.S. Constitution, but by the Constitution of Arizona.

I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn't supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.

The proposed Constitution is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both.

[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.

I want to just obey the Constitution.The Constitution says only gold and silver can be legal tender.

In a very real sense, the Constitution is our compact with history . . . [but] the Constitution can maintain that compact and serve as the lodestar of our political system only if its terms are binding on us. To the extent we depart from the document's language and rely instead on generalities that we see written between the lines, we rob the Constitution of its binding force and give free reign to the fashions and passions of the day.

I took an oath to protect the Constitution, and protecting the Constitution means not letting the president bypass the separation of powers.

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.

I would not look to the U.S. Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in 2012.

Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.

The commitment to international agreements is embodied, it's found in the U.S. Constitution. Article Six of the U.S. Constitution provides that treaties of the United States are part of the supreme law of the land along with the constitution itself and laws passed by Congress. Well, the US government certainly has not been acting in recent years as if treaties were part of the supreme law of the land.

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.

Every member of the Senate has a constitutional duty to follow the Constitution and to uphold the Constitution.

The terms of the 2008 constitution [which ensures the military will continue to be the ultimate authority] could not benefit Burma in the long run. I think this constitution should be revised.

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'?

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.

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.

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.

Some may not like the Constitution's requirements, but that doesn't make the Constitution a pirate's charter.

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.

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?

In the year 2010, Kenya adopted a new constitution. With that constitution, we further secured the human rights and civil liberties of our citizens and entrenched constitutional governance and justice.

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.

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.

Constitutions are violated, and it would be absurd to expect the federal government to enforce the Constitution against itself. If the very federal judges the Constitution was partly intended to restrain were the ones exclusively charged with enforcing it, then "America possesses only the effigy of a Constitution." The states, the very constituents of the Union, had to do the enforcing.

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.

[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.

Even the country's first president chafed at the limits placed on him by the writers of the U.S. Constitution. From the nature of the Constitution, ... I must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.

The future and success of America is not in this Constitution, but in the laws of God upon which this Constitution is founded.

I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.

They will sustain the constitution and laws and institutions of the United States, and be the champions of liberty and of that constitution when its integrity shall be threatened.

[A]s it must be admitted that the remedy under the Constitution lies where it has been marked out by the Constitution; and that no appeal can be consistently made from that remedy by those who were and still profess to be parties to it, but the appeal to the parties themselves having an authority above the Constitution or to the law of nature & of nature's God.

I had to choose between the president and the Constitution. I was aware of the fact that I could be compelled to testify. But I chose the Constitution. No Army officer wants to be put in that position, but there I was.

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

It [the Constitution] didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted.

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

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.

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.

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!

As a former Commander, I gave an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. As a state senator, I gave that same oath. As a Congressman, I gave an oath to defend the Constitution. There are some things that are not negotiable: Faith, my family, and the Constitution are dead center. It is nonnegotiable to me.

Drafting a constitution is only the first step. The constitution has to be granted legitimacy by open discussion and a fair, representative referendum.

[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.

No for the return of Saddam's Baath party. This is against the constitution and those who are negotiating to bring them back are violating the constitution.

Basically, if you become president, you must swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and what the Constitution says.

Two Soviets . . . were talking to each other. And one of them asked, "What's the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the United States Constitution?" And the other one said, "That's easy. The Soviet Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of gathering. The American Constitution guarantees freedom after speech and freedom after gathering."

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.

I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in 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 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.

I don't care about the Constitution! The Constitution isn't here; you're here. Don't be a pinhead.

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.

We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our property and our liberty and our property under the Constitution.