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Constitutions should consist only of general provisions; the reason is that they must necessarily be permanent, and that they cannot calculate for the possible change of things. -- Alexander Hamilton
Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper. -- Margaret Thatcher
Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led. -- Thomas Carlyle
Slavery is wrong. If Slavery is right, all words, acts, laws, and Constitutions against it, are themselves wrong, and should be silenced, and swept away. -- Abraham Lincoln
The right of an individual to conduct intimate relationships in the intimacy of his or her own home seems to me to be the heart of the Constitutions protection of privacy. -- Harry A. Blackmun
Men have always been obliged to fight to preserve liberty. Constitutions and laws do not safeguard liberty. It can be preserved only by a tolerant people, and this means eternal conflict. -- Clarence Darrow
Charles Beard warned us that governments-inc luding the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their Constitutions are intended to serve these interests. -- Howard Zinn
The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accursed; Man is more than Constitutions; better rot beneath the sod, Than be true to Church and State while we are doubly false to God. -- James Russell Lowell
By the time [John Adams] came to write his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States in 1787 he had as dark a view of the American character as that of any critic in our history. -- Gordon S. Wood
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority. -- William Howard Taft
[John] Adams said his objective in writing his Defence of the Constitutions of the United States and his Davila essays was to counter what he thought was the unfair criticism of the American state constitutions made by the French philosophers, especially [Anne Robert Jacques] Turgot. -- Gordon S. Wood
For good nurture and education implant good constitutions. -- Plato
The constitutions of Maryland and New York are founded in higher wisdom. -- Ezra Stiles
Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict. -- Daniel Pipes
Religious freedom is already protected in the United States. It's in our Constitution. It's in most state constitutions. -- Dannel Malloy
Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? -- Henry David Thoreau
The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. -- George Washington
Lots of countries have great constitutions, but their leaders have a practice of ignoring the rules whenever they feel like it. -- Adam Davidson
Laws and constitutions ought to be weighed... to constitute that which is most conducing to the establishment of justice and liberty. -- Algernon Sidney
There are loads of countries that have nice written constitutions like ours. But there aren't loads of countries where they're followed. -- Stephen Breyer
A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes. -- Joseph Addison
My grandfather, on my father's side, helped to draft one of the first constitutions of China. He was a fairly well-known scholar. -- Maya Lin
It seems that the right of freedom of speech that was enshrined in numerous constitutions is now under attack by religious institutions. -- Salman Rushdie
The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that... it is their right and duty to be at all times armed. -- Thomas Jefferson
In 1688, Edward Lloyd opened a coffeehouse on London's seafront popular among underwriters, men in powdered wigs with mathematical minds and steely constitutions who offered to compensate owners if their boats were lost at sea. -- Charles Duhigg
The Emancipation Proclamation is predicated upon the idea that the President may so annul the constitutions and laws of sovereign states, overthrow their domestic relations, deprive loyal men of their property, and disloyal as well, without trial or condemnation. -- Melville Fuller
I am fully persuaded that thousands of our fellow-men might profit equally by a similar course to mine; but, constitutions not being all alike, a different course of treatment may be advisable for the removal of so tormenting an affliction. -- William Banting
Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified. -- Michael Ignatieff
History is rich with adventurous men, long on charisma, with a highly developed instinct for their own interests, who have pursued personal power - bypassing parliaments and constitutions, distributing favours to their minions, and conflating their own desires with the interests of the community. -- Umberto Eco
The world is littered with constitutions that have written guarantees of rights but that don't actually deliver rights. What differentiates the ones where rights are real from where rights are fake is that it's in the initial interests of the majority to actually deliver these rights. -- Noah Feldman
For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution. -- Stephen Covey
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them. -- Barack Obama
State constitutions typically provide that the state first has to service its debt, then make it pension payments, and then pay for services. What we don't know is whether that order will be enforced. And ultimately, the busted state is going to be looking to the federal government for a bailout. Think Greece, but on a much bigger scale. -- Eugene Fama
Man is more than constitutions. -- John Greenleaf Whittier
The constitution of a country should not violate the constitutions of its citizens. -- Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
The great cause of revolutions is this, that while nations move onward, constitutions stand still. -- Thomas B. Macaulay
People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense-words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions-words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History -- Libba Bray
Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates. -- Charles Caleb Colton
Where there is no market economy, the best intentioned provisions of constitutions and laws remain a dead letter. -- Ludwig von Mises
Unfortunately, some of the African leaders employ various nefarious means to remain in office far beyond what their constitutions permit. -- Jimmy Carter
The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. -- Noah Webster
We may form free constitutions, but our vices will destroy them; we may enact laws, but they will not protect us. -- Lyman Beecher
Very few established institutions, governments and constitutions ...are ever destroyed by their enemies until they have been corrupted and weakened by their friends. -- Walter Lippmann
The divine science of government is the science of social happiness, and the blessings of society depend entirely on the constitutions of government. -- John Adams
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
[John Adams' writings] had indicted the United States for slavishly copying the English constitution by erecting bicameral legislatures in their state constitutions, most drafted in 1776. -- Gordon S. Wood
Every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is today null and void, precisely as in every one against Negroes. -- Susan B. Anthony
The republic which sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to politicians and statesmen, for the safety of its liberties, never will have any. -- Wendell Phillips
... strike the words "white male" from all your constitutions, and then, with fair sailing, let us sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish together. -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton
All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights. -- Theodore Roosevelt
The nicest constitutions of government are often like the finest pieces of clock-work, which, depending on so many motions, are therefore more subject to be out of order. -- Alexander Pope
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. -- Thomas Jefferson
The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity. -- Aristotle
The pest of society are the egotist, they are dull and bright, sacred and profane, course and fine. It is a disease that like the flu falls on all constitutions. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised. -- Susan B. Anthony
There is a written and an unwritten law. The one by which we regulate our constitutions in our cities is the written law; that which arises from customs is the unwritten law. -- Diogenes Laertius
Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. -- Thomas Jefferson
Governor Ford is sworn to support the Constitution of the United States and also of this State Illinois, and these constitutions guarantee religious as well as civil liberty to all religious societies whatever. -- Joseph Smith, Jr.
All civil states, with their officers of justice, in their respective constitutions and administrations, are proved essentially civil, and therefore not judges, governors, or defenders of the spiritual, or Christian, state and worship. -- Roger Williams
It is clear that those constitutions which aim at the common good are right, as being in accord with absolute justice; while those which aim only at the good of the rulers are wrong. -- Aristotle
It is necessary to curb the power of government. This is the task of all constitutions, bills of rights and laws. This is the meaning of all struggles which men have fought for liberty. -- Ludwig von Mises
Establish that a Government may decline a provision for its debts, though able to make it, and you overthrow all public morality, you unhinge all the principles that must preserve the limits of free constitutions. -- Alexander Hamilton

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