Henry Clay Quotes

The construction applied . . . to those parts of the Constitution of the United States which delegate Congress a power . . . ought not to be construed as themselves to give unlimited powers, nor a part to be so taken as to destroy the whole residue of that instrument.

If the constitution does not give the court means equal to the political emergency of such cases, it is hardly worth spending any breath upon.

The Warren Court wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution... I intend to succeed where they failed.

[The necessary and proper clause] neither enlarges any power specifically granted; nor is it a grant of any new power to Congress; But it is merely a declaration, for the removal of all uncertainty, that the means of carrying into execution those otherwise granted are included in the grant.

And I think we as a people need to stop being disingenuous about what the Constitution provides for. It does not provide for this all-encompassing power that we've seen exercised over the last several decades. It's what's gotten us into this bankrupt position.

Nothing in the 14th Amendment or in any other constitutional provision suggests that the president may usurp legislative power to prevent a violation of the Constitution.

The Constitution was about a limitation on power.

Power's not what the Constitution was about.

Words, especially those of a constitution, are not to be read with such stultifying narrowness.

Limitation is essential to authority. A government is legitimate only if it is effectively limited.

There are limits to power, as those who put their hopes in a constitution always discover.

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

Altering the Constitution has become the daily business of the Federal Government which the document is supposed to guide and limit. Both Congress and the judiciary assume, and exercise, countless powers they aren't entitled to.

Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.

Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.

The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government.

The Constitution is not a suicide pact.

I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation, where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless.

The public welfare demands that constitutional cases must be decided according to the terms of the Constitution itself, and not according to judges views of fairness, reasonableness, or justice. I have no fear of constitutional amendments properly adopted, but I do fear the rewriting of the Constitution by judges under the guise of interpretation.

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.

...[T]oday's Washington is about as attentive to the Tenth Amendment as the Unitarian Church is to the Book of Revelation.

Even the country's first president chafed at the limits placed on him by the writers of the U.S. Constitution. From the nature of the Constitution, ... I must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.

I can find no warrant for such appropriation in the Constitution.

If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare... they may appoint teachers in every state... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.