A Constitution should be short and obscure.

The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.

For me, the essence of the great American Dream is spiritual. I believe that our Constitution is inspired and that it is based on principles that are timeless and universal. This is the reason why 95% of all written constitutions throughout the world are modeled after our Constitution.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

The Constitution is the guide which I never will abandon.

The fact is that we would have had comprehensive health care now, had it not been for Ted Kennedy’s deliberately blocking the legislation that I proposed in 1978 or ’79.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes.

Alimony – the ransom that the happy pay to the devil.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Finality is not the language of politics.

Anywhere in Latin America there is a potential threat of the pathology of caudillismo and it has to be guarded against.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

When the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.

I think members of the legislature, people who have to run for office, know the connection between money and influence on what laws get passed.

Don’t interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

Liberty must be limited in order to be possessed.

Governance should be designed as an equalizer. Democrats are more inclined towards working families and those who are struggling for a better life.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government – that is despotism.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

Men and women may form associations for and among themselves and be governed by stipulations that are mutually acceptable.

A statesman who confines himself to popular legislation – or, for the matter of that, a playwright who confines himself to popular plays – is like a blind man’s dog who goes wherever the blind man pulls him, on the ground that both of them want to go to the same place.

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.

Under the Timber and Stone Act of 1878, which might well have been called the ‚Dust and Ashes Act,‘ any citizen of the United States could take up one hundred and sixty acres of timber land and, by paying two dollars and a half an acre for it, obtain title.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

A good compromise, a good piece of legislation, is like a good sentence; or a good piece of music. Everybody can recognize it. They say, ‚Huh. It works. It makes sense.‘

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

We’re talking about in the Proposition 8 case fundamental rights, civil rights. I offer no apology for the position I took in Prop. 8.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.

This country is being managed to death, being public related to death.

Man is not free unless government is limited.

I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families – and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.

It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

We shouldn’t have to be burdened with all the technicalities that come up from time to time with shrewd, smart lawyers interpreting what the laws or what the Constitution may or may not say.

Collegiality is crucial to the success of our mission. We could not do the job the Constitution assigns to us if we didn’t – to use one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s favorite expressions – ‚Get over it!‘

We need to pass comprehensive immigration reform, period.

I love being in a courtroom.

I don’t think we need more gun control laws.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that’s not what America’s about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don’t contract them.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

A mission statement is not something you write overnight… But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values. It becomes the criterion by which you measure everything else in your life.

One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term ‚reform‘ is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various level of the government, in work practices and procedures.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

In politics nothing is contemptible.