Ross Perot Quotes

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.

Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother.

I do not have, nor do I believe I have seen, a vision capacious and convincing enough to propound as an organizing principle for the next phase in the law of our Constitution.

I suppose the thing that really interests me is what mankind did with the big, big, big discoveries that have created our modern age.

It has been more than 60 years since the constitution was put in place. There are provisions in the constitution that no longer suit the times. Since the constitution was promulgated, we've seen the emergence of new values, such as privacy, the environment and so on, which need to be incorporated.

Industrialization based on machinery, already referred to as a characteristic of our age, is but one aspect of the revolution that is being wrought by technology.

We live in a dominant culture of ceaseless Departure and Progress that has so far lasted two or three centuries.

A major one which no one can overlook is technological and based on inventions and discoveries which have altered the whole basis of production and deeply affected social relations.

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

I shall work with Congress, civil society groups and local government executives who are convinced that charter changes are needed to enable the country to surmount the unprecedented challenges of the 21st century.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn't exist. TV didn't exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

I think that we live in techno-enthusiastic times. We celebrate our technologies because people are frightened by the world we've made.

Our society cannot progress while our constitution stands still.

Our laws need to reflect the evolution of technology and the changing expectations of American society. This is why the Constitution is often called a 'living' document.

Who cares about the men who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms? How ironic that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they take up in our imagination.

Every major technological step forward has profoundly changed human society - that's how we know they're major, even if we don't always realise it at the time. Farming created cities. Writing, followed eventually by printing, vastly increased the preservation and transmission of cultural information across time and space.

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.

The European talks of progress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he has established a society which has mistaken comfort for civilization.

If we can make the Constitution better in the opinion of those who are opposed to it, without weakening its frame, or abridging its usefulness, in the judgment of those who are attached to it, we act the part of wise and liberal men.

Every generation of Americans writes its own Constitution.

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.

It is wrong to say that the Constitution will change with the times. It will be, illuminated by the times.

Rapid changes - the machine age, the advent of universal and rapid communication, and many other new factors - have brought new problems. Succeeding generations have attempted to keep pace by reforming in piecemeal fashion this or that attendant abuse. As a result evils overlap and reform becomes confused and frustrated. We lose sight, from time to time, of our ultimate human objectives.

I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which is that you've got industrial capitalism on one side and romantic love on the other. Those, along with non-instrumental art, are supposed to get you through the day?