17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 415. Regarding the Necessary and Proper Clause in context of the powers of Congress.
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)
Context: The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a Nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confiding the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conducive to the end. This provision is made in a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.
“In human affairs, all that endures is what men think.”
Source: The God of the Machine (1943), p. 15
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Isabel Paterson 17
author and editor 1886–1961Related quotes
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“I think it foolhardy to predict the absolute limits of human endurance.”
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The Temper of Our Time (1967)
Context: Free men are aware of the imperfection inherent in human affairs, and they are willing to fight and die for that which is not perfect. They know that basic human problems can have no final solutions, that our freedom, justice, equality, etc. are far from absolute, and that the good life is compounded of half measures, compromises, lesser evils, and gropings toward the perfect. The rejection of approximations and the insistence on absolutes are the manifestation of a nihilism that loathes freedom, tolerance, and equity.
“That the gods superintend all the affairs of men, and that there are such beings as dæmons.”
Plato, 42.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 3: Plato
“Hope, of all ills that men endure,
The only cheap and universal cure.”
The Mistress. For Hope; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).