Andrew Breitbart Quotes

If by the statement that what the Constitution meant at the time of its adoption it means today, it is intended to say that the great clauses of the Constitution must be confined to the interpretation which the framers, with the conditions and outlook of their time would have placed upon them, the statement carries its own refutation. It was to guard against such a narrow conception that Chief Justice Marshall uttered a memorable warning— ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.’

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive]

The Constitution is a living, breathing document that can speak to you and nobody else.

That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism; it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things.

Liberals see the Constitution itself as 'living' and 'evolving' that is, gradually turning into something that would have been unrecognizable to its authors.

I used to say that the Constitution is not a living document. It's dead, dead, dead. But I've gotten better. I no longer say that. The truth is that the Constitution is not one that morphs. It's an enduring Constitution, not a changing Constitution. That is what I've meant when I've said that the Constitution is dead.

I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.

A constitutional tradition that works is one that is in a constant state of dynamic evolution. You have a written constitution that says 'x,' but no constitutional system works if it just follows what's in that written constitution and never changes. Interpretation gives it the freedom to change.

Originalism says that when you consult the text, you give it the meaning it had when it was adopted, not some later modern meaning.

I was raised by parents who really admired the religious leaders of the left, as many 60s and 70s liberals did.

The American Constitution has changed, is changing, and by the law of its very existence must continue to change, in its substance and practical working even its words remain the same.

Every generation of Americans writes its own Constitution.

It doesn't really matter what one writes into a constitution. The important thing is what the collective instinct eventually makes of it.

Americans, by means of the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution, entered into a social contract which the successive generations assent to yet change its meanings with the changing contexts of different times.

… we strangle democracy by letting a fossilizing process harden the Constitution into a cocoon which must be violently broken because it could not grow with the life within. Life implies growth, and the Constitution was never meant to be used as the Bible was by our most puritanical Puritans. The letter killeth. Do these people really want to be ruled by a frozen document?

… they are terrified lest the Constitution be interpreted as it was meant to be interpreted in each age according to that period's own ideas instead of those of the past generation. It seems to me it would be more intelligent to be afraid lest we strangle democracy by letting a fossilizing process harden the Constitution into a cocoon which must be violently broken because it could not grow with the life within. Life implies growth, and the Constitution was never meant to be used as the Bible was by our most puritanical Puritans.

I've been politically radical my whole life, so when the left attacks, that hurts more.

Conservatives always knew that the Left made a concerted effort to dominate in the entertainment field because it's such a fabulous way to plant the seed of an agenda. Sugar helps the medicine go down, as does seeing it on the silver screen or hearing it in a catchy pop hook.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

Basically [Louise] Brandeis was a Jeffersonian. And you say the timing is great, and it is in a lot of senses, except not for [Tomas] Jefferson, because this is a Hamiltonian moment, and he's the rock star of the minute with a great musical.

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

So I shamelessly say, no, I want him [Obama] to fail, if his agenda is a far- left collectivism, some people say socialism, as a conservative heartfelt, deeply, why would I want socialism to succeed?

Universities are seminaries to produce Leftists

[T]he Constitution was a product of its times. [Progressive]

Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.