Framers Quotes - Page 2

• My political curiosity, exclusive of my anxious solicitude for the public welfare, leads me to ask who authorized them (the framers of the Constitution) to speak the language of 'We, the People,' instead of 'We, the States'?

  Patrick Henry

  People, Political, Curiosity

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• The framers knew that liberty is a fragile thing, and so should we.

  William J. Brennan

  Liberty, Fragile Things, Should

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• A strong body makes the mind strong.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Strong, Exercise, Gun

  Thomas Jefferson (1829). “Memoirs, Correspondence, and Private Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Late President of the United States”, p.287

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• Let us face reality. The framers (of the Constitution) have simply been too shrewd for us. They have outwitted us. They designed separate institutions that cannot be unified by mechanical linkages frail bridges(or) tinkering. If we are to turn the founders upside down we must directly confront the Constitutional structure they erected.

  James MacGregor Burns

  Reality, Bridges, Tinkering

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• Americans - not just starting thirty years ago but going back to the beginning, when we were rebelling against King George - we've always been of two minds about the government, which is why the framers wrote the Constitution the way they did.

  William J. Clinton

  Kings, Government, Years

  "Bill Clinton: Someone We Can All Agree On". Interview with Charles P.Pierce and Mark Warren, www.esquire.com. January 18, 2012.

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• As you know, I have over the years written critically about the U.N. I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers.

  John Bolton

  Writing, Years, Stressed

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• The very inclusion of the right to keep and bear arms in the Bill of Rights shows that the framers of the Constitution considered it an individual right.

  Samuel Ray Cummings

  Rights, Bears, Arms

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• That, in part, is why the Constitution's framers gave justices life tenure ? to enable them to rule wherever the law and the Constitution led them, without obligation or fear of political reprisal. Former Republican president Gerald Ford recently paid tribute to John Paul Stevens, his only appointee to the Supreme Court, who is also far more liberal than Republicans expected. He has served his nation well, ... with dignity, intellect and without partisan political concerns.

  Gerald R. Ford

  Law, Justice, Political

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• The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the Framers understood that prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would be the very opposite of freedom.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Opposites, Boards, Would Be

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• All in all, the framers would probably agree that it's better to impeach too often than too seldom. If presidents can't be virtuous, they should at least be nervous.

  Joseph Sobran

  President, Nervous, Should

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• Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Character, Gun, Games

  Quoted in Colin Jarman The Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).

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• Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.

  Patrick Henry

  Giving Up, 4th Of July, Jealous

  Virginia's U.S. Constitution ratification convention, June 5, 1788.

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• Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?

  Barry Goldwater

  Religious, Iran, Issues

  Barry Morris Goldwater, C. C. Goldwater (2007). “The Conscience of a Conservative”, p.132, Princeton University Press

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• The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting, or with protecting the expressive activity of topless dancers, which of late has found some shelter under the First Amendment. Rather, the Framers cherished unabridged freedom of political communication.

  George Will

  Communication, Government, Dancer

  George F. Will (2003). “With a Happy Eye, But...: America and the World, 1997--2002”, p.278, Simon and Schuster

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• In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice.

  Mike DeWine

  Issues, Government, Self

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a 'living Constitution.' They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.

  George Will

  War, Responsibility, Government

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• Until the 1930s, the Constitution served as a major constraint on federal economic interventionism. The government's powers were understood to be just as the framers intended: few and explicitly enumerated in our founding document and its amendments. Search the Constitution as long as you like, and you will find no specific authority conveyed for the government to spend money on global-warming research, urban mass transit, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, or countless other items in the stimulus package and, even without it, in the regular federal budget.

  Robert Higgs

  Government, Long, Unemployment

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• I think [Louis] Brandeis challenges all of the current justices. As he said, "If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold." You have to take the values that the framers were concerned about and translate them into this new age.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Thinking, Light, Justice

  Source: www.slate.com

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• When a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy.

  Robert Bork

  People, Judging, Democracy

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• The Constitution's framers intended to restrict central authority to the few areas that could not be handled by states. The drafters would be horrified at how the present court misapplies what they designed.

  Doug Bandow

  Would Be, Constitution, Authority

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• I think he's [Louis Brandeis] a great model for progressive justices today who want to answer the originalists. It's not that the original paradigm cases are irrelevant, but you have to focus on the values the framers were trying to protect, not on the means with which those values were invaded in the 18th century.

  Jeffrey Rosen

  Mean, Thinking, Justice

  Source: www.slate.com

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• It is impossible to build sound constitutional doctrine upon a mistaken understanding of Constitutional history... The establishment clause has been expressly freighted with Jefferson's misleading metaphor for nearly forty years... There is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build a wall of separation... The recent court decisions are in no way based on either the language or intent of the framers.

  William Rehnquist

  Wall, Years, Decision

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• While the machinery of law enforcement and indeed the nature of crime itself have changed dramatically since the Fourth Amendment became part of the Nation's fundamental law in 1791, what the Framers understood then remains true today - that the task of combating crime and convicting the guilty will in every era seem of such critical and pressing concern that we may be lured by the temptations of expediency into forsaking our commitment to protecting individual liberty and privacy.

  William J. Brennan

  Commitment, Law, Temptation

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• The absence of utopianism in the Constitution, law, and traditional political culture has been ... important in limiting expectations concerning what can be achieved by politics. The history of the last two centuries confirms what the framers of the Constitution understood: that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and the search for unalloyed virtue in public life leads to unalloyed terror.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Law, Two, Perfect

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• If our free society is to endure, and I know it will, those who govern must recognize that the Framers of the Constitution limited their power in order to preserve human dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.

  William J. Brennan

  Air, Order, Heritage

  "Reason and Passion: Justice Brennan's Enduring Influence". Book by Brennan Center for Justice, 1997.

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