Mark Kirk Quotes

The genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

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

The Constitution is constant. There's not one elected official who has the power to change it. There is a way to amend the Constitution, and the Constitution spells out the procedures that must be taken to change it. Presidents cannot. Now, I know this is gonna shock many of you in the low-information community.

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

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.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states ... to remain the rule of interpretations?

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

It would be a novel and dangerous doctrine that a legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence.

Anybody who questions the validity of the Constitution, whether it works in the modern era, should never be president.

As a matter of traditional and sound constitutional doctrine, an amendment to the Constitution should be the last resort when all other measures have proved inadequate.

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.

The U.S. constitution is an extraordinary document. In my view, it should not be amended often.

One of the things I learned in law school is that there's nothing wrong or undesirable or dishonorable or destructive about amending the Constitution.

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.

It is time... to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over 'originalism' versus 'dynamism' or 'evolution' and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.

I used to have a great fear of constitutional conventions. I have a great fear now of not having one.

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

A permanent constitution must be the work of quiet, leisure, much inquiry, and great deliberation.

Our constitution is a conservative document. It's a document which is established to maintain the status quo unless a an overwhelming majority to change that status quo can be martialed.

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 [Supreme] Court did not interpret the Constitution—the court amended it.

People seem to be concerned about the Constitution of the United States only when it pertains to something that is of concern to them.

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

Perpetuity is stamped upon the Constitution by the blood of our fathers. For this purpose was the principle of amendment inserted in the Constitution which all have sworn to support and in violation of which no state or states have the right to secede, much less dissolve the Union.