Top 1200 Constitutional Government Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.

Under my contract with the American voter, we are proposing a series of ethics reforms on day one to end government corruption. They include a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

The British monarchy has the political and constitutional task of subtracting from the government and governors of Britain the papal and kingly airs that in America, because we have no such institution, unfortunately adhere to the president.

[A] mere demarcation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands.

Now I realize it's fashionable in some circles to believe that no one in government should encourage others to read the Bible. That we're told we'll violate the constitutional separation of church and state established by the Founding Fathers and the First Amendment. The First Amendment was not written to protect people and their laws from religious values. It was written to protect those values from government tyranny.

... large and permanent military establishments ... are forbidden by the principles of free government, and against the necessity of which the militia were meant to be a constitutional bulwark.

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

If we quickly cast aside our constitutional form of government, then the enemy will not be the terrorists, it will be us.

Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system…The central feature of the American constitutional system—the separation of powers—exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers.

President Obama's executive actions give work permits and federal entitlement benefits to people illegally in America - in direct violation of the laws passed by Congress. This undermines the entire constitutional system of government.

The State, every government whatever its form, character or color - be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik - is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

The Reagan Administration has fostered a climate in which a barest majority of the Supreme Court caters to the passions and hatreds of the American mob, stripping away the constitutional shield outside our bedrooms.... How tragically ironic that an Administration that promised to get Government "off our backs" is now so active in draping Government gumshoes over every part of our anatomies.

The reason the FISA standard is constitutional is that the government is supposed to use FISA surveillance not for criminal investigations but for counterintelligence probes pursued under the president's authority to conduct foreign policy.

Christians, above all people, should desire that their elected representatives submit to the Constitution, because it is constitutional government that has done more to protect Christian liberty than any governing document ever devised by man.

Violence has no constitutional sanction; and every government from the beginning has moved against it. But where grievances pile high and most of the elected spokesmen represent the Establishment, violence may be the only effective response.

In most constitutional states the citizens rule and are ruled by turns, for the idea of a constitutional state implies that the natures of the citizens are equal, and do not differ at all.

I think any good judge recognizes his or her place in our constitutional government, and that place is not to upset the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives.

In historical and constitutional terms, the recent political status vote in Puerto Rico was a necessary but obviously not decisive step on the road of self-determination leading to full self-government.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States ... formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities.

It is crucial that the House exercises its oversight functions to ensure constitutional accountability of government agencies, especially as the bureaucracies associated with ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank flex their muscles and seek to expand their authority.

I've always been a big supporter of the Constitutional right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition government for redress of grievances. It's just that I never envisioned it taking the form of thousands of people screaming 'you asshole!' at me.

From a constitutional point of view there is an advantage to democracy and it must be balanced and the Supreme Court should be given another constitutional tool that will also give power to Judaism.

Constitutional interpretation is not the business of the Court only, but also properly the business of all branches of government.

This election is a critical step in that overall plan - transforming the Iraqi government into a fully constitutional one, able to secure its own borders and ensure the safety of its citizens.

Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? ... A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.

It is fundamental that the great powers of Congress to conduct war and to regulate the Nation's foreign relations are subject to the constitutional requirements of due process. The imperative necessity for safeguarding these rights to procedural due process under the gravest of emergencies has existed throughout our constitutional history, for it is then, under the pressing exigencies of crisis, that there is the greatest temptation to dispense with fundamental constitutional guarantees which, it is feared, will inhibit governmental action.

If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

Obama might think of himself as one, but he is not a dictator. We are not a banana republic yet. This is not an authoritarian form of government. This is a constitutional republic, and the president doesn't allow or disallow. The president can't buy or purchase.

What Americans were really objecting to had nothing to do with constitutional principles. their objection was not to Parliament's constitutional right to levy certain kinds of taxes as opposed to others, but to its effort to collect any.

In time of peace there can, at all events, be no justification for the creation of a permanent debt by the Federal Government. Its limited range of constitutional duties may certainly under such circumstances be performed without such a resort.

The Constitution of the United States has absolutely nothing to say about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Were the federal courts to recognize such a right, it would be completely without constitutional basis.

Like some great swelling river, the powers of the federal government have today breached their constitutional levees and spilled into countless areas of life never anticipated by the founders.

If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration's success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.

A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.

Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate.

No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than any [constitutional] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government.

It is a remarkable fact in the political history of man that there is scarcely an instance of a free constitutional government which has been the work exclusively of foresight and wisdom. They have all been the result of a fortunate combination of circumstances.

As the people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived, it seems strictly consonant to the republican theory, to recur to the same original authority, not only whenever it may be necessary to enlarge, diminish, or new-model the powers of the government, but also whenever any one of the departments may commit encroachments on the chartered authorities of the others.

Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

I wish the government and the Minister of Justice would address these legal and constitutional arguments, but they refuse to. They want Canadians to go blindly into their brave new world, but it is not wise for a society to move blindly in any direction.

I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.

I don't think the federal government has any business keeping a list of law-abiding Americans who exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it. When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes. Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of religion. For too long the issue of government aid to church related organizations has been a divisive force in our society and in the Congress. It has erected communication barriers among our religions and fostered intolerance.

It is important to strengthen the State governments; and as this cannot be done by any change in the Federal Constitution (for the preservation of that is all we need contend for), it must be done by the States themselves, erecting such barriers at the constitutional line as cannot be surmounted either by themselves or by the General Government. The only barrier in their power is a wise government. A weak one will lose ground in every contest.

If the federal government won't secure the border, the State of Arizona will step in to complement federal efforts in a constitutional manner and protect the security of its citizens.

Our constitutional system is defined by a balance between the public's need for transparency and the government's need to have a zone of secrecy around decision making. Both are important, yet they are mutually exclusive.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.

If Charlton Heston can have a constitutional right carry a rifle, why can't grandma have a constitutional right to health care?

People who want to come to this country don't have constitutional rights. Once they get here, they do. But coming here is not a constitutional right. So with do, as a nation, have the ability and should have the ability to decide who comes here and when they come here.

To avoid the necessity of a permanent debt and its inevitable consequences, I have advocated and endeavored to carry into effect the policy of confining the appropriations for the public service to such objects only as are clearly with the constitutional authority of the Federal Government.

No higher proof exists of the strength of popular government than, though the chosen of the people be struck down, his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain.

I am a pro-growth, constitutional, limited government conservative. So I'm going to speak out for what I believe in - the kind of inclusive, aspirational, optimistic politics which unites people.

It is a president's constitutional right to nominate a Supreme Court justice, and it is the Senate's constitutional right to act as a check on a president and withhold its consent.

I call the present system 'Post-Constitutional America.' As I sometimes put it, the U.S. Constitution poses no serious threat to our form of government.

The Leader of the Opposition's constitutional obligation - the obligation to Parliament - it's the reason we did the merger! - is to make sure Canadians have an alternative for government.

The Government have consistently made it clear that the mechanism in the United Kingdom whereby the European draft constitutional treaty could be implemented is approval by the House of Commons followed by a referendum of the people of Britain. There is no question of implementing it by the back door.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

...[W]e insist on the principle that no danger or crisis, foreign or domestic, will be solved by Americans surrendering more of their constitutional liberties, in the foolish hope that a bigger government will provide greater security.