No society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19 years.
Constitution Quotes
Those who ratified the Constitution conceived that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed in the specified powers, but a limited government, tied down to the specified powers which explain and define the general terms.
The United States Constitution has proven itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
Some men look at the constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and […]
The constitution supposes, what the History of all Govts. demonstrates, that the Ex. is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care, vested the question of war in the Legisl. But the Doctrines lately advanced strike at the root of all these provisions, and […]
The Constitution was made for the people and not people for the Constitution.
I am sworn to uphold the Constitution as Andy Johnson understands it and interprets it.
The fallacy… lies in confounding a single party with the parties to the Constitutional Compact of the United States. The latter having made the compact may do what they will with it. The former, as one only of the parties, owes fidelity to it, until released by consent or absolved by an intolerable abuse of […]
But there is a higher law than the Constitution…
Amendments to the Constitution ought to not be too frequently made;… (If) continually tinkered with it would lose all its prestige and dignity, and the old instrument would be lost sight of altogether in a short time.