Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The Constitutional Convention is the only vehicle through which we can get a clear-cut and unequivocal decision of the people.

I get nervous every time we start tinkering with the Constitution.

I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions. I have a great fear now of not having one.

I don't believe in altering the Constitution.

I would also hope that no one would think about trying to amend the constitution as a political strategy.

Americans have to have a link with their Constitution. They have to understand it in the context of their own time.

It they do not succeed with the Constitution, then they must succeed without it.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

People now do not want a constitution framed for them by their representatives—they want to pass on each section of it themselves.

I wanted the Irish Constitution to be as explicit as it possibly could be, with as few fictions as possible.

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

I yield ... to the conviction that our Constitution cannot last. The Union has been prolonged thus far by miracles ... they cannot continue.

When we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution ... we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in what was said a hundred years ago.

How a constitution is written can sometimes matter almost as much as what it contains.

If the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the Nation ... be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable government, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

It is arrogant to pretend that ... we can gauge accurately the intent of the Framers [of the Constitution] on application of principle to specific, contemporary questions.

The path to an amendment to the Constitution is a thorny one.

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

It would be a novel and dangerous doctrine that a legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence.

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it.

We believe that all legislative assemblies should confine themselves to constitutional principles; and that all such laws should be implicitly obeyed by every American.

The construction of the language of the Constitution ... as indeed in all other instances where construction becomes necessary, we are to place ourselves as nearly as possible in the condition of the men who framed that instrument.

However much extra-political forces may influence particular constitution-making situations or constitutional acts, ultimately both involve directly political expressions, involvements and choices.