Constitutional Government 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 exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Country, Freedom, 4th Of July, Independence Day Patriotic, Independence Day

Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

- Patrick Henry

topic: Sweet, Freedom, Business, American Revolution, Individual Liberty

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Bread, Mouths, Labor, Inaugural, Inaugural Address

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

- James Madison

topic: Patriotic, Men, Law, Laws And Government, Liberty And Justice

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

- James Madison

topic: Politics, Constitution, Granted, Limiting Government, Tax Day

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be tomorrow.

- Alexander Hamilton

topic: Men, Law, People, Laws And Government, Liberty And Justice

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

- Thomas Paine

topic: Pain, Freedom, Fear, Independence And Freedom, Independence Day Patriotic

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: 4th Of July, Government, Despotism, Individual Liberty, Individual Power

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Wise, Wisdom, Men, Felicity, Limiting Government

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Strength, Wisdom, Veterans Day, Social Revolution, Manure

If, in the opinion of the people, the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.

- George Washington

topic: Gun, Government, People, Modification, Farewell Address

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

- James Madison

source: Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1852). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution: Written in 1788”, p.273

topic: Government, People, Liberty, Legitimate Power, Federalist Papers

The whole of the Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the people at large or considered as individuals... It establishes some rights of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a right to deprive them of.

- Albert Gallatin

topic: Rights, People, Majority, Individual Liberty, Individual Rights

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

- James Madison

topic: Government, Federal Government, Constitution, Secession, Too Much Power

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

- Joseph Story

source: Joseph Story (1851). “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States: With a Preliminary Review of the Constitutional History of the Colonies and States, Before the Adoption of the Constitution”, p.296

topic: Government, People, United States, Secession, States Rights

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: People, United States, Definitions, States Rights, Federalism

The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Rights, Government, Law, Theocracy, State Government

With respect to the words "general welfare," I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.

- James Madison

topic: Character, Liberty, Details, Limited Government, States Rights

When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Truth, Freedom, Knowledge, Limited Freedom, Limiting Government

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

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

source: Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1941). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1937, Volume 6”, p.570, Best Books on

topic: Government, Democracy, United States, Compilation, Constitution Of The United States

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

- Thomas Jefferson

topic: Freedom, 4th Of July, Yield, Limited Government, State Government

A government on the principles on which constitutional governments arising out of society are established, cannot have the right of altering itself. If it had, it would be arbitrary. It might make itself what it pleased; and wherever such a right is set up, it shows there is no constitution.

- Thomas Paine

source: Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine ...: Prospects on the Rubicon. Rights of man, part I. Rights of man, part II. Letter to the authors of the Republican. Letter to the Abbe Sieyes. Address to the addressers. Letters to Lord Onslow. Dissertation on the first principles of government. Speech delivered in the French National convention. Letter to Mr. Secretary Dundas. The decline and fall of the English system of finance. Letter to the people of France. Reasons for preserving the life of Louis”, p.77

topic: Government, Principles, Would Be, Constitutional Government

Christians, above all people, should desire that their elected representatives submit to the Constitution, because it is constitutional government that has done more to protect Christian liberty than any governing document ever devised by man.

- Chuck Baldwin

topic: Christian, Men, People, Constitutional Government

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

- Rand Paul

topic: Home, Enough Already, Government, Constitutional Government

The cause of the South was the cause of constitutional government, the cause of government regulated by law, and the cause of honesty and fidelity in public servants. No nobler cause did man ever fight for!

- Benjamin F. Grady

topic: Honesty, Fighting, Men, Constitutional Government

The growth of constitutional government, as we now understand it, was promoted by the establishment of two different sets of machinery for making laws and carrying on government.

- Albert Bushnell Hart

source: Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. (1909). “Epochs of American History”

topic: Government, Law, Two, Constitutional Government

There is a difference between constitutional government and judicial dictatorship. And I think it's time we remembered that our Constitution was not put together in order to establish the sovereignty of the judges, it was framed in order to guarantee the sovereignty of the people.

- Alan Keyes

topic: Thinking, Order, Differences, Constitutional Government

The growth of modern constitutional government compels for its successful practice the exercise of reason and considerate judgment by the individual citizens who constitute the electorate.

- Elihu Root

source: Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

topic: Exercise, Successful, Practice, Considerate, Electorate

For liberalism is a delicate thing. It encompasses so much -- constitutional government, democratic elections, freedom of worship, civil rights, free trade -- that we think of it as timeless and universal. But liberalism came into being in a real place and time, like a flame it has wavered in various eras, and it can be snuffed out.

- Russell Shorto

topic: Real, Thinking, Rights, Democratic Elections, Place And Time

Our federal government, which was intended to operate as a very limited constitutional republic, has instead become a virtually socialist leviathan that redistributes trillions of dollars. We can hardly be surprised when countless special interests fight for the money. The only true solution to the campaign money problem is a return to a proper constitutional government that does not control the economy. Big government and big campaign money go hand-in-hand.

- Ron Paul

source: "Why Is There So Much Money in Politics?" by Ron Paul, February 4, 2002.

topic: Fighting, Government, Hands, Money Problem, Leviathan

In the end, the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

- Edward Snowden

source: "Edward Snowden: Obama guilty of deceit over extradition" by Dan Roberts, Rory Carroll, www.theguardian.com. July 1, 2013.

topic: Government, Whistleblowers, Administration, Constitutional Government, Bradley Manning

Judicial review has been a part of our democracy in this constitutional government for over 200 years.

- Ron Kind

topic: Government, Years, Democracy, Judicial Review, Constitutional Government

It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised - and it should be.

- Edward Snowden

topic: Government, Should, Angry, Constitutional Government, Whistleblowers

Let us teach our people again to be proud that they are Filipinos. Let us teach them to realize anew that being a Filipino means having as rich and noble a heritage of language, culture, patriotism and heroic deeds as any nation on earth. Let us teach a steadfast faith in Divine Providence, a stable family institution, the unhampered enjoyment of civil liberties, the advantages of constitutional government, the potentials of a rich and spacious land.

- Carlos P. Romulo

topic: Mean, Government, Land, Language Culture, Divine Providence

Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite.

- William E. Jenner

topic: Mean, Government, People, One World Government, World Order

Liberty in the United States will never be reestablished so long as elites and masses alike look to the president to perform supernatural feats and therefore tolerate a virtually unlimited exercise of presidential power. Until we can restore limited, constitutional government in this country, God save us from great presidents.

- Robert Higgs

topic: Presidential Power, Constitutional Government

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

- Ron Paul

topic: Government, Office, Liberty, Constitutional Government

Communism is not a political party nor a political plan under the Constitution; it is a system of government that is the opposite of our Constitutional government, and it would be necessary to destroy our government before Communism could be set up in the United States....[Communism] even reaches its hand into the sanctity of the family circle itself, disrupting the normal relationship of parent and child, all in a manner unknown and unsanctioned under the Constitutional guarantees under which we in America live.

- David O. McKay

topic: Children, Party, Hands, Systems Of Government, Constitutional Government

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

- Thurgood Marshall

source: "RNC uses Thurgood Marshall speech to attack Supreme Court nominee Kagan" by Russell Berman, thehill.com. May 11, 2010.

topic: Believe, Government, Philadelphia, Defective, Constitutional Government

The American founding is not just about a group of people, a group of men. It is about an ideal: Both a vision and understanding of the very essence of democracy, constitutional government, a representative republic, and the remarkably powerful concept of being endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.

- Paul Kengor

topic: Powerful, Men, Rights, Constitutional Government, Unalienable Rights

History teaches us that the capacity for things to get worse is limitless.

- Chalmers Johnson

source: Chalmers Johnson (2007). “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”, p.71, Macmillan

topic: Limitless, Capacity, Teach, Bankruptcy, Constitutional Government

If these precedents are to stand unimpeached, and to provide sanctions for the continued conduct of America affairs-the Constitution may be nullified by the President and officers who have taken the oath and are under moral obligation to uphold it....they may substitute personal and arbitrary government-the first principle of the totalitarian system against which it has been alleged that World War II was waged-while giving lip service to the principle of constitutional government.

- Charles A. Beard

topic: War, Taken, America, Constitutional Government, Lip Service

If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.

- Siraj Wahhaj

source: "Jihad At the DNC" by Robert Spencer, www.frontpagemag.com. August 21, 2012.

topic: Clever, Government, United States, Constitutional Government

It is only after mature deliberation and thorough preparation that I have decided upon the Program of Revolution and defined the procedure of the revolution in three stages. The first is the period of military government; the second, the period of political tutelage; and the third, the period of constitutional government.

- Sun Yat-sen

source: "The Three Phases of National Reconstruction". Essay by Sun Yat-sen, 1918.

topic: Military, Government, Political, Tutelage, Constitutional Government

The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.

- Maximilien Robespierre

source: Speech on Christmas in 1793. Quoted in "Who said Gaddafi had to go?" by Hugh Roberts, London Review of Books, Volume 33 No. 22, pp. 8-18, November 17, 2011.

topic: Government, Republic, Foundation, Constitutional Government

If we add state capitalism to the Bush administration's success in eroding both the US Constitution and the power of Congress, we may be witnessing the final death of accountable constitutional government.

- Paul Craig Roberts

topic: Government, Add, May, Constitutional Government

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.

- Aristotle

source: Aristotle (2016). “Politics”, p.91, Aristotle

topic: Constitutional Government

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

- Aristotle

source: Aristotle, Stephen Everson (1996). “Aristotle: The Politics and the Constitution of Athens”, p.95, Cambridge University Press

topic: Constitutional Government