Constitution Quotes

All the foundations before mentioned, of the federal government, are by the proposed system to be established, in the most clear, strong, positive, unequivocal expressions, of which our language is capable. Magna charta, or any other law, never contained clauses more decisive and emphatic. While the people of these states have sense, they will understand […]

There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

If the Constitution is to be construed to mean what the majority at any given period in history wish the Constitution to mean, why a written Constitution?

We have seen that the American Constitution has changed, is changing, and by the law of its existence must continue to change, in its substance and practical working even when its words remain the same.

Is that which was deemed to be of so fundamental a nature as to be written into the Constitution to endure for all times to be the sport of shifting winds of doctrine?

The Fourteenth Amendment… was adopted with a view to the protection of the colored race, but has been found to be equally important in its application to the rights of all.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the […]

The said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press, or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.