Ezra Taft Benson Quotes

For most Americans the Constitution had become a hazy document, cited like the Bible on ceremonial occasions but forgotten in the daily transactions of life.

Many seventh graders I know in Illinois, as well as around the Nation, are studying the Constitution. I was pretty impressed with the quality of education our children are receiving because they had not expected me to ask them about it.

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

Most people revere the Constitution but they do not know what is in it. That may be true of many members of Congress.

A commitment to the Constitution is not something that's genetic. It's not inherited. It's not automatic. It has to be taught. And each generation must learn about the Constitution and the values of constitutional institutions within the context of their own time, within the environment of their own time.

Now, take the Constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

That text is known to them that have the patience to read it, possibly one one-hundredth of one percent of the denizens. They forget it, all save a few Western states. I think somebody in Dakota once read it. The Constitution.

There is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.

I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in the Constitution.

I didn't change the Constitution; the equality principle was there from the start. I just was an advocate for seeing its full realization.

We start with first principles. The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers.

The two most important documents affecting the destiny of America are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Both these immortal papers relate primarily to the freedom of the individual.

In 1937, President Franklin Roosevelt reminded us that the Constitution is, and I quote, "a layman's document, not a lawyer's contract."

I think this is the other big issue that is not going away: Do we really believe that bit in the Constitution or not? I think we do.

A constitution, therefore, is to a government what the laws made afterwards by that government are to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make the laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made: and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.

The powers contained in a constitution...ought to be construed liberally in advancement of the public good.

When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.

Every word of [the Constitution] decides a question between power and liberty.

The proper way to make policy decisions under our Constitution in America is for the people to do so through the democratic process.

We say, that the Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God.

Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in the way of education about what our Constitution means and why it was written. Thus, we've fallen easy prey to charlatens, quacks, and hustlers.

I look on that paper (the Constitution) as the most fatal plan that could possibly be conceived to enslave a free people.

The Constitution is the bedrock of all our freedoms; guard and cherish it; keep honor and order in your own house; and the republic will endure.

The more I study it [the Constitution], the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity.

Our new Soviet constitution will, in my opinion, be the most democratic constitution of all those existing in the world.