Important quotes from Americans and America's friends on the U.S. Constitution.
Essential Quotes
U.S. Constitution
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." – From Preamble, September 7, 1787
James Madison
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." – From Federalist 47, January 30, 1788
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." – From Federalist 51, February 6, 1788
Alexander Hamilton
"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." – From Federalist 78, May 28, 1788
Frederick Douglass
“Fellow-citizens! There is no matter in respect to which, the people of the North have allowed themselves to be so ruinously imposed upon, as that of the pro-slavery character of the Constitution. In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT.” – From “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July,” July 5, 1852
Abraham Lincoln
"The candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal." – From "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861
Chief Justice John Marshall
"So, if a law be in opposition to the Constitution, if both the law and the Constitution apply to a particular case, so that the Court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the Constitution, or conformably to the Constitution, disregarding the law, the Court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty." – From Marbury v. Madison, February 24, 1803
Justice John Marshall Harlan
“In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. 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. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” – From Plessy v. Ferguson, May 18, 1896
Montesquieu
"Political liberty exists only when there is no abuse of power. But all experience proves that every man with power is led to abuse it. . . . To prevent the abuse of power, things must be so ordered that power checks power. A constitution may be so framed that no one is compelled to do what is not made obligatory by law, nor forced to abstain from the law permits." – From Spirit of the Laws, 1748
Wilfred M. McClay
"Conflict is part of the human condition and can never be eliminated. Neither can the desire for power and the tendency to abuse it. Therefore a workable constitution has to provide a structure within which conflict can be tamed, institutionalized, and thereby made productive, while the search for power can be kept within bounds."– From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 68
Quotes From the U.S. Constitution
Article I, Section 1 (Legislative Vesting Clause)
"All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives." – September 17, 1787
Article 1, Section 9 (Emoluments Clause)
"No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." – September 17, 1787
Article II, Section 1 (Presidential Eligibilty)
"No Persons except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States." – September 17, 1787
Article III, Section 1 (Judicial Clauses)
"The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office." – September 17, 1787
Article IV, Section 4 (Republican Gaurantee Clause)
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence." – September 17, 1787
Article VI (Supremacy Clause)
"This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." – September 17, 1787
Amendments
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – December 15, 1791
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." – December 15, 1791
Fifth Amendment (Excerpt)
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger.” – December 15, 1791
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” – December 6, 1865
"The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." – August 18, 1920
Quotes from Wilfred M. McClay
"The chief challenge of constitution making was to ensure that . . . different sources of power be so arranged that they could check and balance one another, ensuring that even with a more powerful national government, no one branch or faction or region would dominate over all others." – From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 65
"[The Framers] understood politics as the art of the possible and the best constitution as one built with the crooked timber of selfish humanity in mind – one that took to heart Washington's warning not to have 'too good an opinion of human nature.'" – From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 65
"[The Framers] were emboldened to expand their mission beyond the narrow one of merely correcting the Articles and instead to create something far better, something that could be an example to the world. But their ambition was always tempered by prudence and sobriety. They were exceedingly careful, always mindful of the ominous example of Rome, always suspicious of the utopian turn of mind, and always intent upon keeping the frailty and imperfection of human nature in mind."– From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 65
"Sadly, there was little serious consideration given to the idea of ablishing slavery at the time. Indeed, some delegates were too bound by their states' economic interests to oppose any measure that would even inhibit slavery; one delegate from South Carolina threatened that his delegation and the Georgia delagation would never agree to a Constitution that failed to protect slavery. In other words, the price of pursuing abolitiion of slavery at that time would almost certainly have been the dissolution of the American nation." – From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 72
"Lincoln had an usually high regard for the law in general and a respect bodering on religious veneration for the Constitution in particular. The strength of the Union depended on the nation's unflagging devotion to that document. If he were ever going to use his executive authority to restrict or inhibit slavery, it would have to be done in a way that entirely passed constitutional muster." – From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 178
"The Constitution itself was a great achievement, but from its ratification debates forward, it was in the process of being worked on, and worked out, in actual political practice. Jefferson was an intellectual, but he was not an ideologue. The party system that the Framers had not wanted had arisen anyway, inexorably, and it served the Constitution well, as a way not only to express and channel controvery but to organize it and contain it."– From Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, 2019, page 91
Quotes from the American Founding Era
Alexander Hamilton
"The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are either wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellencies of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided." – From Federalist 9, November 21, 1787
“‘WE, THE PEOPLE of the United States, to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’ Here is a better recognition of popular rights than volumes of those aphorisms which make the principal figure in several of our State bills of rights and which would sound much better in a treatise of ethics than in a constitution of government.” – From Federalist 84, July 16, 1788
"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them. . . . It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments." – From Federalist 78, May 28, 1788
"Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy." – From Federalist 70, March 15, 1788
"The general doctrine then of our Constitution is, that the EXECUTIVE POWER of the nation is vested in the president; subject only to the exceptions and qualifications which are expressed in the instrument." – From "Pacificus No. 1," June 29, 1793
James Madison
"Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other." – From Federalist 10, November 22, 1787
"The proposed Constitution, therefore, even when tested by the rules laid down by its antagoists, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national." – From Federalist 39, January 16, 1788
"The several departments being perfectly co-ordinate by the terms of their common commission, neither of them, it is evident, can pretend to an exclusive or superior right of settling the boundaries between their respective powers; and how are the encroachments of the stronger to be prevented, or the wrongs of the weaker to be redressed, without an appeal to the people themselves, who, as the grantors of the commission, can alone declare its true meaning, and enforce its observance?" – From Federalist 49, February 2, 1788
"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man, must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" – From Federalist 51, February 6, 1788
"It may happen also that different independent departments, the legislative and executive, for example, may in the exercise of their functions, interpret the constitution differently, and thence lay claim each to the same power. This difference of opinion is an inconvenience not entirely to be avoided. It results from what may be called, if it be thought fit, a concurrent right to expound the constitution." – From "Helvidius No. 2," August 31, 1793
John Jay
"With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people-a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence." – From Federalist 2, October 31, 1787
Thomas Jefferson
"The question whether the judges are invested with exclusive authority to decide on the constitutionality of a law, has been heretofore a subject of consideration with me in the exercise of official duties. Certainly there is not a word in the constitution which has given that power to them more than to the Executive or Legislative branches."– From "Letter to William H. Torrance," June 11, 1815
Chief Justice John Marshall
"We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the Government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended. But we think the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to the national legislature that discretion with respect to the means by which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution which will enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it in the manner most beneficial to the people. Let 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." – From McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819
Quotes from Alexis de Tocqueville
"When the insufficieny of the first federal constitution was felt, the exuberance of the political passions to which the revolution had given rise was calmed in part, and all the great men that it had created were still alive. This was a double blessing for America. The assmembly, few in number, that was charged with drafting the second constitution included the finest minds and noblest characters that had ever appeared in the New World." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"The great cause of the superiority of the federal constitution is in the very character of the legislators. In the period when it was formed, the ruin of the confederation appeared imminent; it was so to speak present in all eyes. In that extremity the people chose not perhaps the men they liked best, but those they esteemed the most." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"The federal constitution concentrated all the rights of the executive power, like all its responsibilty, in one man alone. It gave four years of existence to the president; it assured him the enjoyment of his salary for the duration of his magistracy; it composed a constituency for him and armed him with a suspensive veto. In a word, after having carefully traced the sphere of executive power, it sought to give it as much as possible a strong and free position within that sphere." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"The federal government follows a more just and moderate course than the states. There is more wisdom in its views, more durablity and clever combination in its projects, more skill, coherence, and firmness in the execution of its manners." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"It is fact incontestable that in the United States the taste for and usage of republican government are born in the townships and within the provincial assemblies. . . . The public spirit of the Union itself is in a way only a summation of provincial patriotism." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"I almost never encountered a man of the people in America who did not discern with a surprising facility the obligations arising from laws of Congress and those whose origin is in the laws of his state, and who, after distinguishing the objects placed within the general perogatives of the Union from those that the local legislature ought to regulate, could not indicate the point at which the competence of the federal courts begins and the limit at which that of the state tribunals stops." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
"The Federalist is a fine book that, though special to America, ought to be familiar to statesmen of every country." – From Democracy in America, Vol. 1, Part 1, Chapter 8, 1835
Quotes from the Civil War Era
Andrew Jackson
"It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." – From "Veto Message of the Bill on the Bank of the United States," July 10, 1832
Justice Joseph Story
"The constitution of the United States is to receive a reasonable interpretation of its language, and its powers, keeping in view the objects and purposes, for which those powers were conferred. By a reasonable interpretation, we mean, that in case the words are susceptible of two different senses, the one strict, the other more enlarged, that should be adopted, which is most consonant with the apparent objects and intent of the constitution; that which will give it efficacy and force, as a government, rather than that, which will impair its operations, and reduce it to a state of imbecility. Of course we do not mean, that the words for this purpose are to be strained beyond their common and natural sense; but keeping within that limit, the exposition is to have a fair and just latitude, so as on the one hand to avoid obvious mischief, and on the other hand to promote the public good." – From Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, 1833
Abraham Lincoln
"We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution." – From "Speech on the Dred Scott Descision," February 27, 1860
"It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Congress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do certainly include those who may be fairly called 'our fathers who framed the Government under which we live.' And so assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper division of local from federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories." – From "Address at Cooper Union," February 27, 1860
"I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination." – From "First Inaugural Address," March 4, 1861
Frederick Douglass
“I hold that the Federal Government was never, in its essence, anything but an anti-slavery government. Abolish slavery tomorrow, and not a sentence of syllable of the Constitution need be altered. It was purposely so framed as to give no claim, no sanction to the claim, of property in man. If in its true origin slavery had any relation to the government, it was only as the scaffolding to the magnificent structure, to be removed as soon as the building was completed.” – From “Address for the Promotion of Colored Enlistment,” 1864
Quotes from 20th Century Americans
Woodrow Wilson
"All that progressives ask or desire is permission – in an era when 'development,' 'evolution,' is the scientific word – to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine." – From "What is Progress?" 1913
Theodore Roosevelt
"My view was that every executive officer, and above all every executive officer in high position, was a steward of the people bound actively and affirmatively to do all he could for the people, and not to content himself with the negative merit of keeping his talents undamaged in a napkin. I declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it." – From Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, 1913
William Howard Taft
"The true view of the Executive functions is, as I conceive it, that the President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power or justly implied and included within such express grant as proper and necessary to its exercise. Such specific grant must be either in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof." – From Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers, 1916
Chief Justice Earl Warren
“We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” – From Brown v. Board of Education, May 17, 1954
Justice William Brennan
"[Marbury v. Madison] declared the basic principle that the federal judiciary is supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution, and that principle has ever since been respected by this Court and the Country as a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system." – From Cooper v. Aaron, 1958
"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 in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. What the constitutional fundamentals meant to the wisdom of other times cannot be their measure to the vision of our time. Similarly, what those fundamentals mean for us, our descendants will learn, cannot be the measure to the vision of their time." – From "Speech at the Text and Teaching Symposium," October 12, 1985
Justice Clarence Thomas
"As far as the Constitution is concerned, it is irrelevant whether a government’s racial classifications are drawn by those who wish to oppress a race or by those who have a sincere desire to help those thought to be disadvantaged. There can be no doubt that the paternalism that appears to lie at the heart of this program is at war with the principle of inherent equality that underlies and infuses our Constitution. See Declaration of Independence ('We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness')." – From Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, June 12, 1995
Justice Anthony Kennedy
"This analysis compels the conclusion that same-sex couples may exercise the right to marry. The four principles and traditions to be discussed demonstrate that the reasons marriage is fundamental under the Constitution apply with equal force to the same sex couples." – From Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015
Chief Justice John Roberts
"Understand well what this dissent is about: It is not about whether, in my judgment, the institution of marriage should be changed to include same-sex couples. It is instead about whether, in our democratic republic, that decision should rest with the people acting through their elected representative, or with five laywers who happen to hold commissions authorizing them to resolve legal disputes according to law. The Constitution leaves no doubt about the answer." – From Obergefell v. Hodges, June 26, 2015
James Ceaser
"Political science was the great contribution of the Greeks, most notably of Artistotle, and it was renewed and strengthened in the seventeeenth and eigthteenth centuries, above all by Locke and Montesquieu. The American Founders nevertheless deserve much of the credit for refining this science and introducing it in a way that showed what it could contribute to the political world. The American Founding marked the high point up to that time—and in retrospect, it seems, of all time—for the application of political science to human affairs." – From Designing a Polity: America's Constitution in Theory and Practice, 2011
Wilson Carey McWilliams
"The American Constitution, of course, gives no formal import to any social institution other than property: like the founders of liberalism generally, the American framers were inclined to think that, when possible, government should leave social life and moral education to the devices of others." – From Redeeming Democracy in America, 2011
Peter Lawler and Richard M. Reinsch
"Thus, America's written Constitution of 1787 has to be understood by the unwritten order. That order encompasses America's common law heritage, the colonists' practice of self-government, the positive good of religious devotion and pluralism, the colonies as seperate and then unified political actors in war, largely democratic emmigration patterns, and colonial resistance to an empire that had abused historic common law rights and its own tradition of limited government. Our Framers built as statesmen, and as such they drew from all the sources that history, philosophy, political precedent, religion, and the rest of our civilized tradition had given them."– From A Constitution in Full: Recovering the Unwritten Foundation of American Liberty, 2019
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