Constitution proverbs

Page 4

◆ It is a measure of the framers' fear that a passing majority might find it expedient to compromise 4th Amendment values that these values were embodied in the Constitution itself.

- Sandra Day O'Conner98

◆ Don't begin to think you're the President. You're not. The Constitution provides for only one.

- Donald Rumsfeld98

◆ I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ''needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents "interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

- Barry Goldwater98

◆ Health coverage for regular citizens isn't mandated by the Constitution, but we're obligated to provide adequate medical care for prisoners, whatever the cost.

- Jim Riley98

◆ I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ''needed'' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents interests,'' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.

- Barry Goldwater98

◆ 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. -Samuel Adams

- Sam Adams98

◆ The assertion that 'all men are created equal' was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain, and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use

- Abraham Lincoln98

◆ There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.

- Antonin Scalia98

◆ The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive

- Edward Gibbon98

◆ Statutes authorizing unreasonable searches were the core concern of the framers of the 4th Amendment.

- Sandra Day O'Conner98

◆ But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

- Lysander Spooner98

◆ The Constitution is not a panacea for every blot upon the public welfare, nor should this Court, ordained as a judicial body, be thought of as a general haven for reform movements

- John Marshal98