“The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.”

— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Writing for the Court, Bain Peanut Co. v. Pinson, 282 U.S. 499, 501 (1931).
1930s

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107

United States Supreme Court justice 1841–1935

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“[My] approach recognizes the basic principle of a written Constitution. We "the people" adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning, a meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution. Aside from amendment according to Article V, the Constitution’s meaning cannot be updated, or changed, or altered by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President. Of course, even when strictly interpreted as I believe it should be, the Constitution remains a modern, "breathing" document as some like to call it, in the sense that the Court is constantly required to interpret how its provisions apply to the Constitutional questions of modern life. Nevertheless, strict interpretation must never surrender to the understandably attractive impulse towards creative but unwarranted alterations of first principles.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Speech to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2 February 2001.
2000s

“The forces of good will must be mobilized in order to go the additional distance and make integration and the brotherhood of man a reality. First, the federal government must use all of its constitutional authority to enforce the law of the land. As we look back over the years, we must honestly admit that only one branch of the government has given consistent, forthright, vigorous leadership, namely the judicial branch of the government, but the executive and legislative branches of the government have been all too apathetic, all too silent, and sometimes hypocritical. The time has come for all of the branches of the federal government to work in a vigorous manner to make integration a reality.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)

“I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution … taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

“When we understand this we see clearly that the subject round which the alternative senses play must be twofold. And we must therefore consider the subject of this work [the Divine Comedy] as literally understood, and then its subject as allegorically intended. The subject of the whole work, then, taken in the literal sense only is "the state of souls after death" without qualification, for the whole progress of the work hinges on it and about it. Whereas if the work be taken allegorically, the subject is "man as by good or ill deserts, in the exercise of the freedom of his choice, he becomes liable to rewarding or punishing justice."”
Hiis visis, manifestum est quod duplex oportet esse subiectum circa quod currant alterni sensus. Et ideo videndum est de subiecto huius operis, prout ad litteram accipitur; deinde de subiecto, prout allegorice sententiatur. Est ergo subiectum totius operis, litteraliter tantum accepti, status animarum post mortem simpliciter sumptus. Nam de illo et circa illum totius operis versatur processus. Si vero accipiatur opus allegorice, subiectum est homo, prout merendo et demerendo per arbitrii libertatem iustitie premiandi et puniendi obnoxius est.

Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) Italian poet

Letter to Can Grande (Epistle XIII, 23–25), as translated by Charles Singleton in his essay "Two Kinds of Allegory" published in Dante Studies 1 (Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 87.
Epistolae (Letters)

“For me, the only correct meaning of that phrase is that our Government must proceed according to the 'law of the land'—that is, according to written constitutional and statutory provisions as interpreted by court decisions.”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

On due process, dissenting in In Re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970).

“Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Fourth of July Address to Congress (1861)
Context: And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic, or democracy — a government of the people by the same people — can or can not maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?

“Let's not allow ourselves to be upset by small things we should despise and forget. Remember "Life is too short to be little".”

Dale Carnegie book How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

Source: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living

“The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.”

C.G. Jung book Psychological Types

Source: Psychological Types, or, The Psychology of Individuation (1921), Ch. 1, p. 82

“If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Negotiating
Essays (1625)
Context: If you would work any man, you must either know his nature and fashions, and so lead him; or his ends, and so persuade him or his weakness and disadvantages, and so awe him or those that have interest in him, and so govern him. In dealing with cunning persons, we must ever consider their ends, to interpret their speeches; and it is good to say little to them, and that which they least look for. In all negotiations of difficulty, a man may not look to sow and reap at once; but must prepare business, and so ripen it by degrees.

“Liberty must be allowed to work out its natural results; and these will, ere long, astonish the world.”

James Buchanan (1791–1868) American politician, 15th President of the United States (in office from 1857 to 1861)

As quoted in Presidential Leadership : Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House (2004) edited by James Taranto and Leonard Leo.

“The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.”

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Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. 107

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