Constitution Quotes

God knows I detest slavery but it is an existing evil, and we must endure it and give it such protection as is guaranteed by the Constitution.

~ Millard Fillmore

More students have a better knowledge of pop culture than of the Constitution.

~ Charles Bowen

As members of Congress, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the United States, not the Republican or Democratic party. I have been willing to stand up to my own leadership when it's in the national interest.

~ Jackie Speier

In terms of personalities - I don't care about the personalities, I want leadership that's in favor of my principles: free markets, adherence to the Constitution, and equal treatment for everyone under the law.

~ Dave Brat

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

~ Antonin Scalia

It is the right of our people to organize to oppose any law and any part of the Constitution with which they are not in sympathy.

~ Al Smith

All systems in Pakistan appear to be in a haste to achieve something, which can have both positive and negative implications. Let us take a pause and examine the two fundamental questions: One, are we promoting the rule of law and the Constitution? Two, are we strengthening or weakening the institutions?

~ Ashfaq Parvez Kayani

Every presidential candidate highlights patriotism, but Mr. Romney's is backed by the Mormon belief that the United States was chosen by God to play a special role in history, its Constitution divinely inspired.

~ Jodi Kantor

As a former Commander, I gave an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. As a state senator, I gave that same oath. As a Congressman, I gave an oath to defend the Constitution. There are some things that are not negotiable: Faith, my family, and the Constitution are dead center. It is nonnegotiable to me.

~ Ryan Zinke

I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.

~ Barack Obama

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.

~ Newt Gingrich

Either somebody has equal rights, or they don't. And certainly in the Irish constitution, marriage is genderless. There's no mention of a man and a woman.

~ Hozier

Until politicos take a true stand in defense of marriage by proposing an anti-adultery amendment to the Constitution, stop demonizing gays and lesbians when the one debasing your marriage is the individual in the mirror.

~ John Ridley

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

~ James Madison

As far as the constitution allows me, I will try to ensure that there is responsible and accountable governance at all levels of government in the country. For I will not have kept my own trust with the Nigerian people if I allow others abuse theirs under my watch.

~ Muhammadu Buhari

It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.

~ Sandra Day O'connor

In fact, my mom always told me because I was the daughter of an Army officer born overseas in Paris, France, that under the Constitution she believed that I could never run for president.

~ Karen Hughes

Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don't have to be foreign countries.

~ Edward Snowden

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

~ John Adams

The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Constitution is not neutral. It was designed to take the government off the backs of people.

~ William O. Douglas

There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.

~ Ron Paul

The whole frame of the Federal Constitution proves that the government which it creates was intended to be one of limited and specified powers.

~ James K. Polk

I follow a set of principles, I follow the Constitution. And that's what I base my votes on. Limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty.

~ Justin Amash

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

~ Lysander Spooner

A disturbing prospect looms before us as Americans consider the possibility of a second term for President Barack Obama. Millions of conservatives who revere the Constitution, with its guarantees of freedom and limited government, have watched with alarm as the campaign season has unfolded.

~ James Dobson

The tenth amendment said the federal government is supposed to only have powers that were explicitly given in the Constitution. I think the federal government's gone way beyond that. The Constitution never said that you could have a Federal Reserve that would have $2.8 trillion in assets. We've gotten out of control.

~ David Malpass

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations.

~ Simon Sinek

If children do not understand the Constitution, they cannot understand how our government functions, or what their rights and responsibilities are as citizens of the United States.

~ John Roberts

Money is speech. It's incongruous to say a multimillionaire can spend as much on his own campaign as he wants, but you can only give $2,300. His free speech rights are different from yours, thus violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. It's absurd.

~ Roger Stone

A judge's role is to ensure that the legislature remains within the limits of its assigned authority under the Constitution. Judges have no authority to second-guess the wisdom of the value judgments and policy choices the legislature has made.

~ Paul Watford

I imagine an America that can actually change. That we become a nation that prospers again but without pillaging the resources of nations that make their people hate us. That we become a nation that, as the constitution says in its preamble, its very first paragraph, 'promotes the general welfare' of its people.

~ Richard Schiff

The Framers of the Constitution knew that free speech is the friend of change and revolution. But they also knew that it is always the deadliest enemy of tyranny.

~ Hugo Black

The Constitution that I interpret and apply is not living, but dead, or as I prefer to call it, enduring. It means, today, not what current society, much less the court, thinks it ought to mean, but what it meant when it was adopted.

~ Antonin Scalia

The individual can maintain himself in a society definitely organized only through possessing an equally definite mental and moral constitution. This is what the neuropath lacks. His state of disturbance causes him to be constantly taken by surprise by circumstances.

~ Émile Durkheim

Reconciliation is what takes place, of course, at higher levels. President Karzai has been very clear about the red lines for reconciliation, accept the constitution, lay down their weapons, cut their ties with al Qaeda and essentially become productive or at least participating members of society in that regard.

~ David Petraeus

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

~ Andrew Johnson

I believe the attorney general or the deputy attorney general has an obligation to follow the law and the Constitution and to give their independent legal advice to the President.

~ Sally Yates

It cannot be said that the Constitution formed 'the people of the United States,' for all time, into a corporation. It does not speak of 'the people' as a corporation, but as individuals. A corporation does not describe itself as 'we,' nor as 'people,' nor as 'ourselves.' Nor does a corporation, in legal language, have any 'posterity.'

~ Lysander Spooner

I look forward to taking on issues regarding the Constitution, intellectual property, terrorism, and other legal and regulatory reforms.

~ Ron Desantis