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Constitution Quotes

“But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

GovernmentLostLibertyForeverChangedConstitutionPresidentialPatriotFoundingFreedom And LibertyFreedom Of ThoughtFreedom LibertyOur Founding FathersUs Founding FathersForefathersFounding AmericaEncroachmentUs ConstitutionAmerican PatriotismAmerican LibertyAmerican PatriotGovernment And SocietyPatriotism And Freedom
Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize into an undercover dictatorship to restrict the art of healing to one class of Men and deny equal privileges to others; the Constitution of the Republic should make a Special privilege for medical freedoms as well as religious freedom.”

MenShouldWellsArtTimePoliticsReligiousFreedomHealingClassSpecialHealthPoliticianEqualConstitutionMedicinePrivilegeEqualityDenyMedicalRepublicDictatorshipPhysiciansOrganizeEqual RightsRestrictionReligious FreedomFreedom Of ReligionFounding Fathers DemocracyUndercover
Author:Benjamin Rush
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“Constitutions become the ultimate tyranny," Paul said. "They’re organized power on such a scale as to be overwhelming. The constitution is social power mobilized and it has no conscience. It can crush the highest and the lowest, removing all dignity and individuality. It has an unstable balance point and no limitations.”

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Book:Dune Messiah
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“The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison.”

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Book:Fablehaven
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“I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d'etat imaginable.”

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Author:Kurt Vonnegut
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“On every question of construction (of the Constitution) let us carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit of the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.”

TryingMaySpiritConstitutionLibertarianDebatePatriotismConstructionAmendmentsConformAdoptedFreedom LibertyRight To Bear ArmsBearing ArmsRights And Freedoms2 AmendmentUs Constitution
Book:Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States
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“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. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

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Book:Thomas Jefferson, His Words and Vision
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“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scripture ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”

FormLawMoralPrinciplesOughtBasesConstitutionScriptureOur Founding FathersFounding Fathers ChristianMoral PrinciplesMoral LawChristian HeritageReligion And Government
Book:History of the United States: to which is prefixed a brief historical account of our [English] ancestors, from the dispersion at Babel, to their migration to America, and of the conquest of South America, by the Spaniards
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“There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters”

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Book:The beauties of the Hon. Daniel Webster: selected and arranged, with a critical essay on his genius and writings
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“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.”

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Author:James Madison
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“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution of your country and the government established under it. Leave evils which exist in some parts of the country, but which are beyond your control, to the all-wise direction of an over-ruling Providence. Perform those duties which are present, plain and positive. Respect the laws of your country.”

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Author:Daniel Webster
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“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

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Book:The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations
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“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring a mark of everlasting infamy on the present generation – enlightened as it is – if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of designing men.”

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Author:Samuel Adams
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“When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe... that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment. As all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.”

IfsMenYearsBelieveMayIdeasLife IsFightingWishFreedomTheoryTruth IsTestsUltimateConstitutionTradeSalvationCompetitionRateAcceptedExperimentsUpsetImperfectFreedom Of SpeechProphecyFree TradeSupreme Court JusticeWagers
Author:Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
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“What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!”

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Book:A Prayer For Owen Meany
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“Of course genes can’t pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought. Each of us is dealt a unique hand of tastes and aptitudes, like curiosity, ambition, empathy, a thirst for novelty or for security, a comfort level with the social or the mechanical or the abstract. Some opportunities we come across click with our constitutions and set us along a path in life.”

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Author:Steven Pinker
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“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.”

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Book:An Examination Into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution Proposed by the Late Convention Held at Philadelphia: With Answers to the Principal Objections that Have Been Raised Against the System
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“After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, "What have you given us, sir?" Franklin Responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is "no," then we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

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Book:Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Ouf-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine
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“You are suffering from an ailment that affects ladies of romantic imaginations. Symptoms include fainting, weariness, loss of appetite, low spirits. While on one level the crisis can be ascribed to wandering about in freezing rain without the benefit of adequate waterproofing, the deeper cause is more likely to be found in some emotional trauma. However, unlike the heroines of your favorite novels, your constitution has not been weakened by the privations of life in earlier, harsher centuries. No tuberculosis, no childhood polio, no unhygienic living conditions. You'll survive.' " pg. 303”

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Author:Diane Setterfield
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“...Cities may be rebuilt, and a People reduced to Poverty, may acquire fresh Property: But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrendered their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.”

PeopleMayGovernmentLostCitiesLibertyPovertyForeverShareChangedConstitutionPropertyLimitationAcquireLegislatureResistingEncroachment
Book:The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
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“I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.”

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Book:The wisdom of Disraeli: or, A great policy for a great party
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“When it shall be said in any country in the world my poor are happy; neither ignorance nor distress is to be found among them; my jails are empty of prisoners, my streets of beggars; the aged are not in want; the taxes are not oppressive; the rational world is my friend, because I am a friend of its happiness: When these things can be said, there may that country boast its Constitution and its Government”

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Book:Collected Writings
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“Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

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Book:The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution: As Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. Together with the Journal of the Federal Convention, Luther Martin's Letter, Yates's Minutes, Congressional Opinions, Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98-'99, and Other Illustrations of the Constitution
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“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites…in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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Author:Edmund Burke
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