CONSTITUTION

Related Subjects: America, Democracy, Government, Law, Nation, State

1. The theory that the Constitution is a written document is a legal fiction. The idea that it can be understood by a study of its language and the history of its past development is equally mythical. It is what the government and the people who count in public affairs recognize and respect as such, what they think it is . . . It is always becoming something else, and those who criticize it and the acts done under it, as well as those who praise, help to make it what it will be tomorrow.—CHARLES A. BEARD, Economic Interpretation of the American Constitution
   

2. The Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.—SALMON P. CHASE
   

3. As the British Constitution is the most subtile 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 at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.—GLADSTONE, Kin Beyond Sea
   

4. Some men look at 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.—JEFFERSON
   

5. When the constitution is openly invaded, when the first original right of the people, from which all laws derive their authority, is directly attacked, inferior grievances naturally lose their force, and are suffered to pass by without punishment or observation.—JUNIUS

6. It cannot be too often remembered that the founders of the Constitution were working in a predominantly agricultural society in which the consequences of the Industrial Revolution could not be even dimly realized. They feared the masses. They were adamant about the "rights" of property. Liberty to them predominantly meant protection of vested interests from the invasions of the multitudes.—HAROLD J. LASKI, The American Presidency
   

7. It's got so it is as easy to amend the Constitution of the United States as it used to be to draw a cork.—THOMAS R. MARSHALL
   

8. In our country it is especially important now to inquire into our Constitution, above all, our Bill of Rights. We came to a virgin continent and have made money so fast, though we have wasted and squandered our resources, that we have forgotten our constitutional heritage.—MAURY MAVERICK, Blood & Ink
   

9. Our Constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states; we are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves.—PERICLES
   

10. You will find no justification in any of the language of the Constitution for delay in the reforms which the mass of the American people now demand.—FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, Address: 150th Anniversary of Signing of Constitution
    

11. Once when Mme. de Stael was praising the British Constitution, Talleyrand explained in an aside: "Above all she admires the habeas corpus."—PHILLIPS RUSSELL, The Glittering Century
    

12. There is a higher law than the Constitution.—WILLIAM H. SEWARD

13. No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.—HERBERT SPENCER, Social Statics
    

14. The Constitution is a great machine—the machine of compromise between liberty and government.—SUN YAT-SEN, Memoirs of a Chinese Revolutionary
    

15. A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory . . . it is made for people of fundamentally differing views.—Opinion, U. S. Supreme Court