Best British Constitution Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that it was our last revolution. Several generations have now passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman has meditated resistance to the established government. In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, daily strengthened by experience, that the means of effecting every improvement which the constitution requires may be found within the constitution itself.”

Liberalism Conservatism British History British Constitution Constitutionalism Whigs Glorious Revolution

Author:Thomas Babington Macaulay

“Vernon Bogdanor's account The Monarchy and the Constitution is written as much in the shadow of Edmund Burke as it is of Walter Bagehot. He stresses the organic development of the British constitution, prefers evolution to revolution, and thinks stability is better than strife.”

Thinking Written Revolution Development Evolution Shadow Accounts Constitution Stress British Stability Strife Monarchy British History British Constitution

Author:David Cannadine

“Absolute monarchy,... is the easiest death, the true Euthanasia of the BRITISH constitution.”

Death Constitution Absolutes British Britain Monarchy Euthanasia British Constitution Absolute Monarchy

Book:Essays moral, political, and literary. (Life of the author, etc.).

Source: Essays moral, political, and literary. (Life of the author, etc.).

“Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.”

Principles Practice Constitution British Contradiction Inconsistency British Constitution Perfect Practice

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

“[The British constitution] presumes more boldly than any other the good sense and the good faith of those who work it.”

Constitution British Working It Parliament Good Sense Good Faith British Constitution

Author:William E. Gladstone

“I am actually what my age and my upbringing have made me - a bourgeois who adheres to the British constitution, adheres to it rather than supports it, and the fact that this isn't dignified doesn't worry me.”

Made Facts Age Class Worry Support Constitution England British Upbringing Bourgeois British Constitution

Author:E. M. Forster

“Like the British constitution, cricket was not made: it has 'grown'.”

Made Constitution British Made It Cricket British Constitution

Author:Neville Cardus

“Were I to define the British constitution, therefore, I should say, it is a limited monarchy, or a mixture of the three forms of government commonly known in the schools, reserving as much of the monarchical splendor, the aristocratical independency, and the democratical freedom, as are necessary that each of these powers may have a control, both in legislation and execution, over the other two, for the preservation of the subject's liberty.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“There is no good government but what is republican. That the only valuable part of the British constitution is so; for the true idea of a republic is "an empire of laws, and not of men." That, as a republic is the best of governments, so that particular arrangement of the powers of society, or in other words, that form of government which is best contrived to secure an impartial and exact execution of the law, is the best of republics.”

Men Ideas Government Form Law Particular Republican Constitution Valuable British Secure Empires Republic Execution Arrangements Forms Of Government Republican Government British Constitution

Author:John Adams

“If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.”

Source: The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I

“A government of laws, and not of men.”

Men Government Law Politics Conservative Presidential Republic Federal Government Founding Fathers Democracy Government And Society Democratic Republic Judicial Power Laws And Government British Constitution

Author:John Adams

“Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt.”

Source: 1903-1905

“The Constitution only guarantees the American people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”

“As the British Constitution is the most subtle organism which has proceeded from progressive history, so the American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Men Purpose Given Work Brain Wonderful Constitution Historical British Subtle Progressive Organisms Constitution Of The United States Us Constitution Constitutional Convention American Constitution British Constitution

Author:William E. Gladstone

“...it is not only the general principles of justice that are infringed, or at least set aside, by the exclusion of women, merely as women, from any share in the representation; that exclusion is also repugnant to the particular principles of the British Constitution. It violates one of the oldest of our constitutional maxims...that taxation and representation should be co-extensive. Do not women pay taxes?”

Should Justice Pay Principles Share Particular Words Of Wisdom Taxes Constitution British Representation Taxation Maxims Exclusion British Constitution

Book:Speech of John Stuart Mill, M.P., on the Admission of Women to the Electoral Franchise: Spoken in the House of Commons, May 20th, 1867

Source: Speech of John Stuart Mill, M.P., on the Admission of Women to the Electoral Franchise: Spoken in the House of Commons, May 20th, 1867

“I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?”

“I do believe that General Washington had not a firm confidence in the durability of our government. He was naturally distrustful of men, and inclined to gloomy apprehensions; and I was ever persuaded that a belief that we must at length end in something like a British constitution, had some weight in his adoption of the ceremonies of levees, birthdays, pompous meetings with Congress, and other forms of the same character, calculated to prepare us gradually for a change which he believed possible, and to let it come on with as little shock as might be to the public mind.”

Source: Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies: From the Papers of Thomas Jefferson

“The British Constitution has always been puzzling and always will be.”

Political Politics Constitution British Puzzling British Constitution

Author:Queen Elizabeth II