Margaret Thatcher Quotes

Our fundamental instrument of government [the Constitution] is an evolving document.

The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.

The Constitution is a document that should only be amended with great caution.

I support a constitutional conversation, as the Labour Party does, which will allow New Zealanders to evolve a more mature and stable constitutional form, but that's not something that I, as Labour Party, would want to impose, either on the party or on the public.

We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor.

The Constitution remains brilliant in its overall design and sound with respect to the Bill of Rights and the separation of powers. But there are numerous archaic provisions that inhibit constructive change and adaptation. These constitutional bits affect the daily life of the republic and every citizen in it.

America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things.

I'm the first Thai prime minister in history that first time win half of parliament seats and second time win 76% of parliamentary seats and I was ousted because too popular.

Without amendments we would never even have had the Bill of Rights.

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.

Even if this opinion meets with a cold reception in the appellate courts we hope that it will at least have the effect of focusing the country ... upon the neglected method of considering constitutional amendments in conventions.

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

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

I deny that the power of amendment [of the Constitution] carries the power of revolution.

A constitution … is good for a certain people and for a certain time. It shouldn’t be mummified.

If the people desire changes in the highest judicial tribunal in the land, the people can speak with their power to amend their own Constitution.

I am a conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a radical to remove all that is bad.

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

Frequent appeals to the people [to amend the Constitution] would in great measure deprive the government of that veneration which time bestows on everything.

No amendment of the proper kind would ever be obtained by the people, if the government should become oppressive, which I verily believe will be the case.

Constitutional reform is exasperatingly slow.

[There] is an easy and peaceable way of amending any parts of the Constitution which may be found inconvenient in practice.

This [nullification] is a normal and traditional American method of circumventing the inflexibility of the Constitution. When the Constitution has come into conflict with the living needs of the nation, and when amendment was impossible, the method of changing the Constitution has been to change it and then get the very human Supreme Court to sanction it.

If the Constitution does not allow women to vote, then the Constitution should be amended or abolished.

The example of changing a constitution by assembling the wise men of the State instead of assembling armies will be worth as much to the world as the former examples we had given them