Constitution Quotes - Page 36

• If a policeman must know the Constitution, then why not a planner?

  William J. Brennan

  Why Not, Urban, Planning

  "Viewpoint: A Blow to Property Rights" by Bernard H. Siegan, reason.com. September 1984.

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• It is my belief that there are "absolutes" in our Bill of Rights, and that they were put there on purpose by men who knew what words meant and meant their prohibitions to be "absolutes."

  Hugo Black

  Men, Rights, Bills

  "The Bill of Rights,"NewYork University Law Review, Apr. 1960

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• There has been a controversy started of late, much better worth examination, concerning the general foundation of Morals; whether they be derived from Reason, or from Sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.

  David Hume

  Intelligent, Perception Of Beauty, Judgement

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• That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution.

  Ezra Pound

  Thinking, Apathy, Forget

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• So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one: "Civil War." Do you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me?" (shoots gun) "I'm awfully sorry. Awfully sorry."

  George Carlin

  Country, Sorry, Philosophy

  "What Am I Doing in New Jersey?". Live album by George Carlin, 1988.

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• One of the most extraordinary examples in recent decades [of unitary visions of constitutional enterprise] is found in a book called "Takings"... Epstein makes an extremely clever but stunningly reductionist argument that the whole Constitution is really designed to protect private property... Can a constitution reflecting as diverse an array of visions and aspirations as ours really be reducible to such as sadly single-minded vision as that?

  Laurence Tribe

  Clever, Book, Vision

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• Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Parent, Libertarian

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence 1793-1798”, p.474, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Americans think their danger is terrorists. They don't understand the terrorists cannot take away habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution.... The terrorists are not anything like the threat we face from our own government in the name of fighting terrorism.... The American constitutional system is near to being overthrown

  Paul Craig Roberts

  Fighting, Thinking, Rights

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• Transforming the European Union into a single State with one army, one constitution and one foreign policy is the critical challenge of the age

  Joschka Fischer

  Army, Challenges, Age

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• Among the expected glories of the Constitution, next to the abolition of Slavery was that of Rum.

  George Clymer

  Abolition Of Slavery, Next, Glory

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• The bottom line is that we've become a nation of thieves, a value rejected by our founders. James Madison, the father of our Constitution, was horrified when Congress appropriated $15,000 to help French refugees. He said, 'I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.' Tragically, today's Americans would run Madison out of town on a rail.

  Walter E. Williams

  Running, Father, Thieves

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• As Members of Congress, we swear an oath to uphold the United States Constitution. It means something to be an American because we believe in our country, we believe in our people, and we believe in our constitution.

  Todd Tiahrt

  Country, Believe, Mean

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• Well, today, we are in the struggle brought on to us by the terrorists of Islam. It is a war that we did not choose. It was a war that was declared against us as Americans, against our people, against our Constitution.

  Todd Tiahrt

  War, Struggle, People

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• The family is the single most important institution in Afghan culture. It is described in the countrys constitution as the fundamental pillar of society.

  Asne Seierstad

  Important, Culture, Fundamentals

  "Bookseller of Kabul author Åsne Seierstad: 'It's not possible to write a neutral story'". Interview With Amelia Hill, www.theguardian.com. July 30, 2010.

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• For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

  David Berlinski

  Life, Dream, Men

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• A careful physician . . . before he attempts to administer a remedy to his patient, must investigate not only the malady of the man he wishes to cure, but also his habits when in health, and his physical constitution.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Retirement, Healthy, Wish

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (1942). “Cicero: De oratore ...”

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• ...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?

  John Stuart Mill

  Justice, Words Of Wisdom, Principles

  John Stuart Mill (1867). “Speech of John Stuart Mill, M.P., on the Admission of Women to the Electoral Franchise: Spoken in the House of Commons, May 20th, 1867”, p.5

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• There are as many archetypes as there are typical situations in life. Endless repetition has engraved these experiences into our psychic constitution, not in the forms of images filled with content, but at first only as forms without content, representing merely the possibility of a certain type of perception and action.

  Carl Jung

  Situations In Life, Psychics, Psychology

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• The future is not in our hands. We have no power over it. We can act only today. We have a sentence in our Constitution that says: 'We will allow the good God to make plans for the future - for yesterday has gone, tomorrow has not yet come and we have only today to make Him known, loved and served.' So we do not worry about the future.

  Mother Teresa

  Yesterday, Hands, Worry

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• Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.

  James Bovard

  Taken, Two, Lunch

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• A great deal of what many Americans hold dear is nowhere written on those four pages of parchment, or in any of the amendments. What has made the Constitution durable is the same as what makes it demanding: the fact that so much was left out.

  Jill Lepore

  Four, Pages, Facts

  "The Commandments" by Jill Lepore, www.newyorker.com. January 17, 2011.

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• The internet has no government, no constitution, no laws, no rights, no police, no courts. Don't talk about fairness or innocence, and don't talk about what should be done. Instead, talk about what is being done and what will be done by the amorphous unreachable undefinable blob called the internet user base.

  Paul Vixie

  Law, Rights, Government

  NANOG mailing list, 2004.

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• Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to.

  Joseph Sobran

  Exercise, Government, Limits

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• 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.

  Joseph Sobran

  Government, Usa, America

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• What a blessing 'terrorism' is for the state! It's the ideal distraction from the day-to-day reality of the state's chief activity: wringing from its subjects the wealth they produce. Last September (2001) a handful of fanatics, armed only with box-cutters, provided a new rationale for the trillion -dollar swindle. A bonanza! I don't know what these 'terrorists' thought they were achieving: Making the infidel respect Allah? If so, they were wrong. You might as well try to make the U.S. government respect the U.S. Constitution.

  Joseph Sobran

  Blessing, Reality, Government

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