Framers Quotes - Page 3

• Almighty Framer of the Skies!O let our pure devotion rise,Like Incense in thy Sight!Wrapt in impenetrable Shade,The Texture of our Souls were made,Till thy Command gave Light.

  Thomas Chatterton

  Sky, Light, Sight

  Thomas Chatterton, Charles Bonnycastle Willcox (1842). “The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton: Acknowledged poems. Chatterton's will. Miscellaneous prose works”, p.324

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• You can understand why the original framers of judicial ethics thought it would be undignified and would call into question the legitimacy of the judicial decision-making process to have mudslinging by judges, but the way that we hobble people of enormous integrity from defending themselves is, I think, deeply problematic in states where you have an elected judiciary, or a judge is subject to recall.

  Deborah Rhode

  Integrity, Thinking, People

  "What Would Brandeis Do?". Interview with Dahlia Lithwick, www.slate.com. June 16, 2016.

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• Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed, as they are in almost every country in Europe.

  Noah Webster

  Country, Army, Gun

  Noah Webster (1787). “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”, p.43

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• Apparently a great many people have forgotten that the framers of our Constitution went to such great effort to create an independent judicial branch that would not be subject to retaliation by either the executive branch or the legislative branch because of some decision made by those judges.

  Sandra Day O'Connor

  Independent, Judging, People

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• What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Country, Freedom, Gun

  Letter toWilliam Stephens Smith, 13 Nov. 1787

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• To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms.

  Richard Henry Lee

  Gun, Strong Arms, People

  Richard Henry Lee (1978). “Letters from the Federal farmer to the Republican”, Univ of Alabama Pr

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• If our free society is to endure, those who govern must recognize human dignity and accept the enforcement of constitutional limitations on their power conceived by the Framers . . . . Such recognition will not come from a technical understanding of the organs of government, or the new forms of wealth they administer. It requires something different, something deeper-a personal confrontation with the wellsprings of our society.

  William J. Brennan

  Government, Understanding, Different

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• Patriotic feelings will surely swell, prompting proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the Framers and reflected in a written document now yellowed with age . . . [F]or many Americans the bicentennial celebration will be little more than a blind pilgrimage to the shrine of the original document now stored in a vault in the National Archives. [Progressive]

  Thurgood Marshall

  Patriotic, Justice, Feelings

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• The people have a right to keep and bear arms.

  Patrick Henry

  Gun, People, Second Amendment

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• The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.

  Walter E. Williams

  Gun, Hunting, Ducks

  Walter E. Williams (2013). “More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well”, p.188, Hoover Press

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• The powers of the sword are in the hands of the yeomanry of America from sixteen to sixty. The militia of these free commonwealths, entitled and accustomed to their arms, when compared with any possible army, must be tremendous and irresistible. Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we shall turn our arms each man against his own bosom. Congress has no power to disarm the militia.

  Tench Coxe

  Gun, Second Amendment, Arms

  The Pennsylvania Gazette, February 20, 1788.

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• If the Constitution framers would come back today, they would have contempt for most of us.

  Walter E. Williams

  Today, Constitution, Contempt

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• The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions. We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic.

  Barry Goldwater

  Religious, Government, Years

  "Excerpts From Goldwater Remarks". Remarks in the Congressional Record, www.nytimes.com. September 15, 1981.

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• The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them.

  Dahlia Lithwick

  Wish, Inspired, Binding

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• A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Being Strong, Nature, Character

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

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• The framers of the Constitution realized that . . . there needed to be some guardian of the sober second thought, and so they created the Senate to fulfill that high and vitally important duty.

  Elihu Root

  Political, Important, Constitution

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• It was not until the Abraham Lincoln administration that an income tax was imposed on Americans. Its stated purpose was to finance the war, but it took until 1872 for it to be repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. It took the Sixteenth Amendment (1913) to make permanent what the Framers feared -- today's income tax.

  Walter E. Williams

  War, Cleveland, Income

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• It is in seeing ourselves whole that we can begin to see ways of working out our differences, of understanding our similarities and of finally forming the cohesive nation that can one day experience the 'domestic tranquility' so hoped for by the framers of the Constitution.

  Robert C. Maynard

  Differences, Work Out, Understanding

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• O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone.

  Patrick Henry

  Should Have, Tyrants, People

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Samuel Bryan, Patrick Henry (2017). “The Federalist Papers & Anti-Federalist Papers: Complete Edition of the Pivotal Constitution Debate: Including Articles of Confederation (1777), Declaration of Independence, U.S. Constitution, Bill of Rights & Other Amendments – All With Founding Fathers’ Arguments & Decisions about the Constitution”, p.77, Madison & Adams Press

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• For all the great dreams profitlessly invested in the digital computer, it is nonetheless true that not since the framers of the American Constitution took seriously the idea that all men are created equal has an idea so transformed the material conditions of life, the expectations of the race.

  David Berlinski

  Life, Dream, Men

  David Berlinski (2000). “The Advent of the Algorithm: The Idea that Rules the World”, Houghton Mifflin

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• The War between the States... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ... [The War] also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'.

  Walter E. Williams

  War, Men, America

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• [the framers of the Constitution] intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.

  Fisher Ames

  Government, Historical, Democracy

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• The framers of our Constitution understood the dangers of unbridled government surveillance. They knew that democracy could flourish only in spaces free from government snooping and interference, and they put restraints on government overreaching in the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. . . . These protections require, at a minimum, a neutral arbiter - a magistrate - standing between the government's endless desire for information and the citizens' desires for privacy.

  Elizabeth Holtzman

  Government, Space, Rights

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• The framers, in their wisdom, designed the [political] system so that power's pretty disbursed.

  Barack Obama

  Political, Political Systems

  Source: www.cbsnews.com

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• If you look at the minutes of the constitutional convention - which we have - Madison who was the main framer, proceeded to develop a system in which - as he put it - power would be in the hands of the wealth of the nation, the more responsible set of men and who recognize the need to protect the rights of property owners. That's why in the constitutional system, the most powerful part of the whole system is the senate.

  Noam Chomsky

  Powerful, Men, Rights

  Interview with Jegan Vincent de Paul, chomsky.info. August 15, 2012.

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