#constitution

The Americans of the age were not an irreligious people; and the fact that they were Christian was very important, for the marks of Christianity lay all across the Constitution. ↗

— Theodore H. White

#christianity #u-s-constitution #age

When the Chief Justice read me the oath,' he [FDR] later told an adviser, 'and came to the words "support the Constitution of the United States" I felt like saying: "Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy--not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy. ↗

— Susan Quinn

#democracy #flexibility #roosevelt #supreme-court #art

It is their mores, then, that make the Americans of the United States...capable of maintaining the rule of democracy.... Too much importance is attached to laws and too little to mores.... I am convinced that the luckiest of geographical circumstances and the best of laws cannot maintain a constitution in spite of mores, whereas the latter can turn even the most unfavorable circumstances...to advantage.... If I have not succeeded in making the reader feel the importance I attach to the practical experience of the Americans, to their habits, laws, and, in a word, their mores, I have failed in the main object of my work. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in American ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#constitution #liberty #morality #usa #values

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties. ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#constitution #interfere #liberties #maintained #must

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. ↗

— James Madison

#constitution #freedom #right-to-bear-arms #second-amendment #freedom

Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one. ↗

— A.J. Liebling

#freedom #press #speech #writing #freedom

If one race be inferior to the other socially, the Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane. ↗

— Henry Billings Brown

#constitution #inferior #other #plane #put

I think the court will determine that the Faith-Based Initiative that the White House has instituted in the last five years is constitutional, in the context of allowing for broad-based programs to include religious providers. ↗

— Jay Alan Sekulow

#broad-based #constitutional #context #court #determine

All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them. ↗

— Felix Frankfurter

#constitution #depends #everything #laws #life

It's not written in the Constitution or anything else.... Congress, just out of the clear blue sky, said the airwaves belong to the people, which means, in essence, that it belongs to Congress. ↗

— Adrian Cronauer

#anything #belong #belongs #blue #blue sky