“I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution.”

On a living Constitution: Speech at Marquette University in Milwaukee (13 March 2001).
2000s

Speech in Indianapolis, Indiana (26 February 1863).
Quote

Speech on BBC radio on the General Strike (8 May 1926), as quoted in Baldwin : A Biography by Keith Middlemas and John Barnes (1969), p. 415 <!-- Weidenfeld and Nicolson -->
1926
Context: I am a man of peace. I am longing and working and praying for peace, but I will not surrender the safety and security of the British constitution. You placed me in power eighteen months ago by the largest majority accorded to any party for many, many years. Have I done anything to forfeit that confidence? Cannot you trust me to ensure a square deal to secure even justice between man and man?

Statement before the House Judiciary Committee considering impeachment of President Richard M. Nixon (25 July 1974). (See External links)

Responding to a question at his press conference (February 28, 1947); reported in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1947, p. 191

An abridged version is inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., http://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/quotations-jefferson-memorial as follows:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
1810s, Letter to H. Tompkinson (AKA Samuel Kercheval) (1816)
Context: I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. Their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual change of circumstances, of favoring progressive accommodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, entrenched themselves behind steady habits, and obliged their subjects to seek through blood and violence rash and ruinous innovations, which, had they been referred to the peaceful deliberations and collected wisdom of the nation, would have been put into acceptable and salutary forms. Let us follow no such examples, nor weakly believe that one generation is not as capable as another of taking care of itself, and of ordering its own affairs.

As quoted in the dedication to The Pumpkin Coach (1935) by Louis Paul

to a waitress who asked him to put out his cigar because smoking in a restaurant in Washington is against Federal law.[citation needed]
2000s

Statement in his Diary http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/japanese_internment/1942.htm on the WWII Internment of Japanese Americans (10 February 1942) <!-- , as quoted in The Colonel : The Life and Wars of Henry Stimson, 1867-1950 (1990) by Godfrey Hodgson, p. 259 -->
Context: The second generation Japanese can only be evacuated either as part of a total evacuation, giving access to the areas only by permits, or by frankly trying to put them out on the ground that their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese. The latter is the fact but I am afraid it will make a tremendous hole in our constitutional system.