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John Marshall3 quotes
We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding. — John Marshall · 1819The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. — John Marshall · 1821Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional. — John Marshall · 1819Abraham Lincoln2 quotes
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual... Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever - it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861William Henry Harrison2 quotes
Those who are called upon to administer it must recognize as its leading principle the duty of shaping their measures so as to produce the greatest good to the greatest number. — William Henry Harrison · 1841I consider the veto power, therefore given by the Constitution to the Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be used only first, to protect the Constitution from violation; secondly, the people from the effects of hasty legislation where their will has been probably disregarded or not well understood, and, thirdly, to prevent the effects of combinations violative of the rights of minorities. — William Henry Harrison · 1841Alexander Hamilton1 quote
A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788Alexis de Tocqueville1 quote
I have never been more struck by the good sense and the practical judgment of the Americans than in the manner in which they elude the numberless difficulties resulting from their Federal Constitution. — Alexis de Tocqueville · 1835Calvin Coolidge1 quote
Our system of government made up of three separate and independent departments, our divided sovereignty composed of Nation and State, the matchless wisdom that is enshrined in our Constitution, all these need constant effort and tireless vigilance for their protection and support. — Calvin Coolidge · 1925Charles Evans Hughes1 quote
We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is. — Charles Evans Hughes · 1907Franklin D. Roosevelt1 quote
Our Constitution is so simple, so practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933Henry Clay1 quote
The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity-unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity. — Henry Clay · 1850James Buchanan1 quote
The Federal Constitution is a grant from the States to Congress of certain specific powers, and the question whether this grant should be liberally or strictly construed has more or less divided political parties from the beginning. — James Buchanan · 1857James K. Polk1 quote
One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights. Minorities have a right to appeal to the Constitution as a shield against such oppression. — James K. Polk · 1845James Madison1 quote
Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? — James Madison · 1787John Adams1 quote
Irritated by no literary altercation, animated by no public debate, heated by no party animosity, I read it with great satisfaction, as the result of good heads prompted by good hearts, as an experiment better adapted to the genius, character, situation, and relations of this nation and country than any which had ever been proposed or suggested. — John Adams · 1797John Marshall Harlan1 quote
Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896John Quincy Adams1 quote
It has promoted the lasting welfare of that country so dear to us all; it has to an extent far beyond the ordinary lot of humanity secured the freedom and happiness of this people. We now receive it as a precious inheritance from those to whom we are indebted for its establishment, doubly bound by the examples which they have left us and by the blessings which we have enjoyed as the fruits of their labors to transmit the same unimpaired to the succeeding generation. — John Quincy Adams · 1825Learned Hand1 quote
Political agitation, by the passions it arouses or the convictions it engenders, may in fact stimulate men to the violation of law. Detestation of existing policies is easily transformed into forcible resistance of the authority which puts them in execution, and it would be folly to disregard the causal relation between tire two. Yet to assimilate agitation, legitimate as such, with direct incitement to violent resistance, is to disregard the tolerance of all methods of political agitation which in normal times is a safeguard of free government. — Learned Hand · 1917Martin Luther King, Jr.1 quote
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir... America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Martin Van Buren1 quote
Looking back to it as a sacred instrument carefully and not easily framed; remembering that it was throughout a work of concession and compromise; viewing it as limited to national objects; regarding it as leaving to the people and the States all power not explicitly parted with, I shall endeavor to preserve, protect, and defend it by anxiously referring to its provision for direction in every action. — Martin Van Buren · 1837Salmon Portland Chase1 quote
The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States. — Salmon Portland Chase · 1869Thomas Paine1 quote
The American Constitutions were to Liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech, and practically construct them into syntax. — Thomas Paine · 1791William E. Gladstone1 quote
But, as the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from the womb and the long gestation of progressive history, so the American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off a given time by the brain and purpose of man. — William E. Gladstone · 1878William J. Brennan, Jr.1 quote
We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look into the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But, the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but it's in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1985