Daniel Webster Quotes

There are no signposts in the sea.

Constitutional interpretation ... is a process of holding an actual government within certain bounds.

The unchanging character of law is the only basis on which continuous action can rest. Without it man would be but as the traveler over endless morasses; the builder on quicksands; the mariner without compass or rudder, driven successively whithersoever changing winds may blow

Every constitutional standard is engaged in difficult but important line-drawing.

Indeed, follow your star if you want to head north and it's the North Star. But if you want to head north and it's Mars, you had better follow somebody else's star.

We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.

A traveller, lost on a desert plain, feels that the recognition of one star, the Pole star, is of itself a great acquisition.

My constitution was destroyed long ago; now I am living under the bylaws.

We must stop setting our sights by the light of each passing ship; instead we must set our course by the stars.

You either believe in the Constitution, or you don't.

Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction.

I am a constitutionalist. I believe in the constitution. I don't believe in altering the constitution.

How odd that Americans, and not just their presidents, have come to think of their Constitution as something separable from the government it's supposed to constitute. In theory, it should be as binding on rulers as the laws of physics are on engineers who design bridges; in practice, its axioms have become mere options. Of course engineers don't have to take oaths to respect the law of gravity; reality gives them no choice. Politics, as we see, makes all human laws optional for politicians.

The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.

Without question, the court does play a vital role in our constitutional system.

Can it be of less consequence that the meaning of a Constitution should be fixed and known, than a meaning of a law should be so?

If you get lost, you can always be found.

The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows.

Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.

We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.

You have to know where you were going in order to get there.

Under our [constitutional system] - either we're going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we're going to have to rethink our process of decision-making.

When we are lost in the woods, the sight of a signpost is a great matter.

So long as we govern our nation by the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, we can be sure that our nation will grow in strength and wisdom and freedom.

I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in the Constitution.