Quotes about amendment (374 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“A sure way of retaining the grace of heaven is to disregard outward appearances, and diligently to cultivate such things as foster amendment of life and fervour of soul, rather than to cultivate those qualities that seem most popular.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

Source: The Inner Life

Life , Way , Soul , Appearance

“These rules are of use only in correcting the figures; since every man makes some mistakes in his first compositions and he who knows them not, cannot amend them. But you, knowing your errors, will correct your works and where you find mistakes amend them, and remember never to fall into them again. But if you try to apply these rules in composition you will never make an end, and will produce confusion in your works.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Error

“[Messrs Ogden and Richards] will reply that they are considering the meaning of a "thought," not of a word. A "thought" is not a social phenomenon, like speech, and therefore does not have the two sides, active and passive, which can be distinguished in speech. I should urge, however, that all the reasons which led our authors to avoid introducing images in explaining meaning should have also led them to avoid introducing "thoughts." If a theory of meaning is to be fitted into natural science as they desire, it is necessary to define the meaning of words without introducing anything "mental" in the sense in which what is "mental" is not subject to the laws of physics. Therefore, for the same reasons for which I now hold that the meaning of words should be explained without introducing images – which I argued to be possible in the above-quoted passage – I also hold that meaning in general should be treated without introducing "thoughts," and should be regarded as a property of words considered as physical phenomena. Let us therefore amend their theory. They say: "'I am thinking of A' is the same thing as 'My thought is being caused by A.'" Let us substitute: "'I am speaking of A' is the same thing as 'My speech is being caused by A.'" Can this theory be true?”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926)

Law , Quotes , Nature , Thinking

“It will always happen when a thing is originally wrong that amendments do not make it right, and it oftens happens that they do as much mischief one way as good the other…”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Way

“Last but not least, I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing that I’ve ever said is that in areas where the government has proven itself either unwilling or unable to defend the lives and the property of Negroes, it’s time for Negroes to defend themselves. Article number two of the constitutional amendments provides you and me the right to own a rifle or a shotgun. It is constitutionally legal to own a shotgun or a rifle. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a rifle and form battalions and go out looking for white folks, although you’d be within your rights—I mean, you’d be justified; but that would be illegal and we don’t do anything illegal. If the white man doesn’t want the black man buying rifles and shotguns, then let the government do its job. […] If he’s not going to do his job in running the government and providing you and me with the protection that our taxes are supposed to be for, since he spends all those billions for his defense budget, he certainly can’t begrudge you and me spending $12 or $15 for a single-shot, or double-action. I hope you understand. Don’t go out shooting people, but any time—brothers and sisters, and especially the men in this audience; some of you wearing Congressional Medals of Honor, with shoulders this wide, chests this big, muscles that big—any time you and I sit around and read where they bomb a church and murder in cold blood, not some grownups, but four little girls while they were praying to the same God the white man taught them to pray to, and you and I see the government go down and can’t find who did it.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

Men , God , People , Hope

“Alas, how can the poor souls live in Concord when you preachers sow amongst them in your sermons debate and discord? They look to you for light and you bring them darkness. Amend these crimes, I exhort you, and set forth God's word truly, both by true preaching and giving a good example, or else, I, whom God has appointed his vicar and high minister here, will see these divisions extinct, and these enormities corrected…”

Henry VIII of England (1491–1547) King of England from 1509 until 1547

Last speech to parliament, December 24, 1545. http://englishhistory.net/tudor/h8speech.html
See also: Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the Reign of Henry VIII, Great Britain. Public Record Office, John Sherren Brewer, Robert Henry, vol. XX, part 2, p. 513. http://books.google.com/books?id=oBsFAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA4-PA513&dq=%22I,+whom+God+has+appointed+his+vicar+and+high+minister+%22&lr=

God , Soul , Light

“We propose to make the process of constitutional amendment far easier, speedier, and simpler than at present.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

"Democratic Ideals" in The Outlook (15 November 1913) https://books.google.com/books?id=1LpOAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA589
1910s

“The old question will be asked in this matter of prerogative, But who shall be judge when this power is made a right use of? 1 answer: between an executive power in being, with such a prerogative, and a legislative that depends upon his will for their convening, there can be no judge on earth; as there can be none between the legislative and the people, should either the executive, or the legislative, when they have got the power in their hands, design, or go about to enslave or destroy them. The people have no other remedy in this, as in all other cases where they have no judge on earth, but to appeal to heaven: for the rulers, in such attempts, exercising a power the people never put into their hands, (who can never be supposed to consent that any body should rule over them for their harm) do that which they have not a right to do. And where the body of the people, or any single man, is deprived of their right, or is under the exercise of a power without right, and have no appeal on earth, then they have a liberty to appeal to heaven, whenever they judge the cause of sufficient moment. And therefore, though the people cannot be judge, so as to have, by the constitution of that society, any superior power, to determine and give effective sentence in the case; yet they have, by a law antecedent and paramount to all positive laws of men, reserved that ultimate determination to themselves which belongs to all mankind, where there lies no appeal on earth, viz. to judge, whether they have just cause to make their appeal to heaven. And this judgment they cannot part with, it being out of a man's power so to submit himself to another, as to give him a liberty to destroy him; God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it. Nor let any one think, this lays a perpetual foundation for disorder; for this operates not, till the inconveniency is so great, that the majority feel it, and are weary of it, and find a necessity to have it amended. But this the executive power, or wise princes, never need come in the danger of: and it is the thing, of all others, they have most need to avoid, as of all others the most perilous.”

John Locke book Two Treatises of Government

Second Treatise of Government http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr14.htm, Sec. 168
Two Treatises of Government (1689)

Life , Men , God , People

“Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.
It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly free," subject only to the Constitution. What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche, for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect free freedom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision.”

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

1850s, The House Divided speech (1858)

People , Education , Decision , Freedom

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Paragraph 1 (p. 7 of Welcome to the Monkey House)
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), "Harrison Bergeron" (1961)

God , Law , Way

“The softer you find your child is, the more you are to seek occasions, at fit times, thus to harden him. The great art in this is, to begin with what is but very little painful, and to proceed by insensible degrees, when you are playing, and in good humour with him, and speaking well of him: and when you have once got him to think himself made amends for his suffering by the praise is given him for his courage; when he can take pride in giving such marks of his manliness, and can prefer the reputation of being brave and stout, to the avoiding a little pain, or the shrinking under it; you need nor despair in time and by the assistance of his growing reason, to master his timorousness, and mend the weakness of his constitution.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 115
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Pain , Art , Courage , Thinking

“Some twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave-state of Louisiana have sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free-state constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and white, and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand persons are thus fully committed to the Union, and to perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very things, and nearly all the things the nation wants — and they ask the nations recognition and it's assistance to make good their committal. Now, if we reject, and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and disperse them. We in effect say to the white men "You are worthless, or worse — we will neither help you, nor be helped by you." To the blacks we say "This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where, and how." If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the Union, I have, so far, been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we recognize, and sustain the new government of Louisiana the converse of all this is made true. We encourage the hearts, and nerve the arms of the twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored man too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance, and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward over them? Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it? Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition, it has been argued that no more than three fourths of those States which have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself against this, further than to say that such a ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently questioned; while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would be unquestioned and unquestionable.”

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

1860s, Last public address (1865)

Men , School , Color , Question

“It's a new day
For the faceless,
Take the torches
From the useless,
First amendment,
Second guesses,
All dependent,
I'll do anything to help youFallen crosses,
New alliance,
Deeper thinkers,
Modern science,
Open guest list,
All inclusive,
No one loses,
Everything you've always wanted”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

Let It Die, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Kevin Churko and Adam Wakeman.
Song lyrics, Scream (2010)

Science , Help , Dependency

“The true faith discovered was
When painted panel, statuary.
Glass-mosaic, window-glass,
Amended what was told awry
By some peasant gospeller.”

W.B. Yeats book The Tower

Wisdom http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1759/
The Tower (1928)

Faith , Painting

“The large corporations, commonly called trusts, though organized in one State, always do business in many States, often doing very little business in the State where they are incorporated. There is utter lack of uniformity in the State laws about them; and as no State has any exclusive interest in or power over their acts, it has in practice proved impossible to get adequate regulation through State action. Therefore, in the interest of the whole people, the Nation should, without interfering with the power of the States in the matter itself, also assume power of supervision and regulation over all corporations doing an interstate business. This is especially true where the corporation derives a portion of its wealth from the existence of some monopolistic element or tendency in its business. There would be no hardship in such supervision; banks are subject to it, and in their case it is now accepted as a simple matter of course. Indeed, it is probable that supervision of corporations by the National Government need not go so far as is now the case with the supervision exercised over them by so conservative a State as Massachusetts, in order to produce excellent results. When the Constitution was adopted, at the end of the eighteenth century, no human wisdom could foretell the sweeping changes, alike in industrial and political conditions, which were to take place by the beginning of the twentieth century. At that time it was accepted as a matter of course that the several States were the proper authorities to regulate, so far as was then necessary, the comparatively insignificant and strictly localized corporate bodies of the day. The conditions are now wholly different and wholly different action is called for. I believe that a law can be framed which will enable the National Government to exercise control along the lines above indicated; profiting by the experience gained through the passage and administration of the Interstate-Commerce Act. If, however, the judgment of the Congress is that it lacks the constitutional power to pass such an act, then a constitutional amendment should be submitted to confer the power.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, First Annual Message to Congress (1901)

Wisdom , People , Law , Exercises

“[The Texas anti-sodomy statute] undoubtedly imposes constraints on liberty. So do laws prohibiting prostitution, recreational use of heroin, and, for that matter, working more than 60 hours per week in a bakery. But there is no right to 'liberty' under the Due Process Clause, though today's opinion repeatedly makes that claim.... The Fourteenth Amendment expressly allows States to deprive their citizens of 'liberty,' so long as 'due process of law' is provided....”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On the right to sodomy: Lawrence v. Texas (2003) (dissenting).
2000s

Law

“In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

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

Concurring in New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971).

People , Secret , Democracy

“You do not define the First Amendment. It defines you. And it is bigger than you. That's how freedom works. It also demands you do your homework. Again and again, I hear gun owners say, how can we believe anything the anti-gun media says when they can't even get the facts right? For too long, you have swallowed manufactured statistics and fabricated technical support from anti-gun organizations that wouldn't know a semi-auto from a sharp stick. And it shows. You fall for it every time.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997)

Support , Freedom , Time

“I have four children, and I want them to grow up in a country that has a working First Amendment.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Appearance on CBS Morning News (18 September 1985) - YouTube video http://youtube.com/watch?v=LD1DI2SntFI

Children , Country

“The Court's justification for consulting its own notions rather than following the original meaning of the Constitution, as I would, apparently is based on the belief of the majority of the Court that for this Court to be bound by the original meaning of the Constitution is an intolerable and debilitating evil; that our Constitution should not be 'shackled to the political theory of a particular era,' and that to save the country from the original Constitution the Court must have constant power to renew it and keep it abreast of this Court's more enlightened theories of what is best for our society. It seems to me that this is an attack not only on the great value of our Constitution itself but also on the concept of a written constitution which is to survive through the years as originally written unless changed through the amendment process which the Framers wisely provided.”

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

Dissenting in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966).

Evil , Change , Country

“What I see in the amendment is not an assertion of great principles, which no man honours more than myself. What is at the bottom of it is rather that principle of peace at any price which a certain party in this country upholds. It is that dangerous dogma which I believe animates the ranks before me at this moment, although many of them may be unconscious of it. That deleterious doctrine haunts the people of this country in every form. Sometimes it is a committee; sometimes it is a letter; sometimes it is an amendment to the Address; sometimes it is a proposition to stop the supplies. That doctrine has done more mischief than any I can well recall that have been afloat this century. It has occasioned more wars than the most ruthless conquerors. It has disturbed and nearly destroyed that political equilibrium so necessary to the liberties of nations and the welfare of the world. It has dimmed occasionally for a moment even the majesty of England. And, my lords, to-night you have an opportunity, which I trust you will not lose, of branding these opinions, these deleterious dogmas, with the reprobation of the Peers of England.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Source: Speech in the House of Lords (10 December 1876), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1273.

War , People , World , Peace

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

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

1860s, First Inaugural Address (1861)

People , Exercises , Country

“Eliza and I composed a precocious critique of the Constitution of the United States of America … We argued that is was as good a scheme for misery as any, since its success in keeping the common people reasonably happy and proud depended on the strength of the people themselves — and yet it prescribed no practical machinery which would tend to make the people, as opposed to their elected representatives, strong.
We said it was possible that the framers of the Constitution were blind to the beauty of persons who were without great wealth or powerful friends or public office, but who were nonetheless genuinely strong.
We thought it was more likely, though, that their framers had not noticed that it was natural, and therefore almost inevitable, that human beings in extraordinary and enduring situations should think of themselves of composing new families. Eliza and I pointed out that this happened no less in democracies than in tyrannies, since human beings were the same the wide world over, and civilized only yesterday.
Elected representatives, hence, could be expected to become members of the famous and powerful family of elected representatives — which would, perfectly naturally, make them wary and squeamish and stingy with respect to all the other sorts of families which, again, perfectly naturally, subdivided mankind.
Eliza and I … proposed that the Constitution be amended so as to guarantee that every citizen, no matter how humble, or crazy or incompetent or deformed, somehow be given membership in some family as covertly xenophobic and crafty as the one their public servants formed.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Slapstick

Source: Slapstick (1976), Ch. 6

People , World , Family , Beauty

“Because for all the back and forth of Washington, we have to remember that this debate is about something bigger. It’s about who we are as a country, and who we want to be for future generations.
Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids a better future?
Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?
Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs here, create businesses here, create industries right here in America?
That’s what this debate is all about. We need more than politics as usual when it comes to immigration. We need reasoned, thoughtful, compassionate debate that focuses on our hopes, not our fears.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to the Nation on Immigration (November 2014)

Children , World , Education , Fear

“What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion - that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years—not, mind you, not that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to the evolving standards of decency, of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

On executing minors: Roper v. Simmons (2005) (dissenting).
2000s

People , Law , Decision , Change

“Hitler took the guns. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. You know, 'political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' And then if another crazy person everybody knew was going to attack goes and kills some people and then I'm to blame and all gun owners are to blame? Well, if somebody runs somebody with a car are they all to blame? Or somebody with a baseball bat? This is common sense and you've got a young high school senior teenager cussing to get attention to pull a stunt but none of use are supposed to talk about it because if you respond to him calling you a piece of this or a piece of that or his cohorts calling Dana Loesch a murderer and people are chanting 'burn her', well then you're a bully. That's why CNN wants to use this to kill the First Amendment, not just the Second Amendment! You have YouTube banning videos with guns, with citizens having guns or showing guns, but Hollywood and the video game makers can show all the guns they want. This is an incredibly discriminatory system!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

"Antigun Activist David Hogg Attacks Infowars For Gay Frogs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN4pTxI12Hc&feature=youtu.be&t=19m59s, The Alex Jones Show, March 2018.

People , School , Cars , Game

“I opposed DOMA in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U. S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. … I know how important the issue of equal rights is to the LGBT community. I share your sense of urgency. If I am elected U. S. Senator, you can be confident that my colleagues in the Senate and the President will know my position.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

On the Defense of Marriage Act, Windy City Times (11 February 2004) http://www.wctimes.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=4018
2004

Confidence , Communication , Sense

“These rules will enable you to have a free and sound judgment; since good judgment is born of clear understanding, and a clear understanding comes of reasons derived from sound rules, and sound rules are the issue of sound experience — the common mother of all the sciences and arts. Hence, bearing in mind the precepts of my rules, you will be able, merely by your amended judgment, to criticise and recognise every thing that is out of proportion in a work, whether in the perspective or in the figures or any thing else.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), I Prolegomena and General Introduction to the Book on Painting

Art , Understanding , Science

“What is a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrat is nothing but a Democrat in disguise. […] The Dixiecrats in Washington, D. C., control the key committees that run the government. The only reason the Dixiecrats control these committees is because they have seniority. The only reason they have seniority is because they come from states where Negroes can’t vote. This is not even a government that’s based on democracy. It is not a government that is made up of representatives of the people. Half of the people in the South can’t even vote. Eastland is not even supposed to be in Washington. Half of the senators and congressmen who occupy these key positions in Washington, D. C., are there illegally, are there unconstitutionally.
These senators and congressmen actually violate the constitutional amendments that guarantee the people of that particular state or county the right to vote. And the Constitution itself has within it the machinery to expel any representative from a state where the voting rights of the people are violated. You don’t even need new legislation. Any person in Congress right now, who is there from a state or a district where the voting rights of the people are violated, that particular person should be expelled from Congress. And when you expel him, you’ve removed one of the obstacles in the path of any real meaningful legislation in this country. In fact, when you expel them, you don’t need new legislation, because they will be replaced by black representatives from counties and districts where the black man is in the majority, not in the minority.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)

People , Democracy , Personality , Country

“I never take offence at any genuine effort to wrest the truth or deduce a rational set of values from the confused phenomena of the external world. It never occurs to me to look for personal factors in the age-long battle for truth. I assume that all hands are really trying to achieve the same main object—the discovery of sound facts and the rejection of fallacies—and it strikes me as only a minor matter that different strivers may happen to see a different perspective now and then. And in matters of mere preference, as distinguished from those involving the question of truth versus fallacy, I do not see any ground whatever for acrimonious feeling. Knowing the capriciousness and complexity of the various biological and psychological factors determining likes, dislikes, interests, indifferences, and so on, one can only be astonished that any two persons have even approximately similar tastes. To resent another's different likes and interests is the summit of illogical absurdity. It is very easy to distinguish a sincere, impersonal difference of opinion and tastes from the arbitrary, ill-motivated, and irrational belittlement which springs from a hostile desire to push another down and which constitutes real offensiveness. I have no tolerance for such real offensiveness—but I greatly enjoy debating questions of truth and value with persons as sincere and devoid of malice as I am. Such debate is really a highly valuable—almost indispensable—ingredient of life; because it enables us to test our own opinions and amend them if we find them in any way erroneous or unjustified.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Robert E. Howard (7 November 1932), in Selected Letters 1932-1934 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 102
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life , Hostility , Truth , Age

“I define speech as any communicative activity. [Can it be nonverbal? ] Yes. [Can it be nonverbal and also not written? ] Yes. [Can it encompass physical actions? ] Yes. Watt [Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Watt, 703 F.2d 586 (1983)] was a case in which what was at issue was sleeping as communicative activity. What I said was that for purposes of the heightened protections that are accorded, sleeping could not be speech. That is to say, I did not say that one could prohibit sleeping merely for the purpose of eliminating the communicative aspect of sleeping, if there is any... [and] I did not say that the Government could seek to prohibit that communication without running afoul of the heightened standards of the first amendment. If they passed a law that allows all other sleeping but only prohibits sleeping where it is intended to communicate, then it would be invalidated. But what I did say was, where you have a general law that just applies to an activity which in itself is normally not communicative, such as sleeping, spitting, whatever you like; clenching your fist, for example; such a law would not be subject to the heightened standards of the first amendment. That is to say, if there is ordinary justification for it, it is fine. It does not have to meet the high need, the no other available alternative requirements of the first amendment. Whereas, when you are dealing with communicative activity, naturally communicative activity—writing, speech, and so forth— any law, even if it is general, across the board, has to meet those higher standards.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings, (8/5/1986), transcript https://web.archive.org/web/20060213232846/http://a255.g.akamaitech.net/7/255/2422/22sep20051120/www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh99-1064/31-110.pdf at pp. 51-52).
1980s

Law , Communication , Nature , Sleep

“We reject the dissent's contention that our approach, by "largely return[ing] the task of defining the contours of Eighth Amendment protection to political majorities," leaves "‘[c]onstitutional doctrine [to] be formulated by the acts of those institutions which the Constitution is supposed to limit,'" […] By reaching a decision supported neither by constitutional text nor by the demonstrable current standards of our citizens, the dissent displays a failure to appreciate that "those institutions which the Constitution is supposed to limit" include the Court itself. To say, as the dissent says, that "‘it is for us ultimately to judge whether the Eighth Amendment permits imposition of the death penalty,'" (quoting Enmund v. Florida) -- and to mean that as the dissent means it, i. e., that it is for us to judge, not on the basis of what we perceive the Eighth Amendment originally prohibited, or on the basis of what we perceive the society through its democratic processes now overwhelmingly disapproves, but on the basis of what we think "proportionate" and "measurably contributory to acceptable goals of punishment" -- to say and mean that, is to replace judges of the law with a committee of philosopher-kings.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Stanford v. Kentucky (1989) (plurality part, case later overruled by Roper); decided June 26, 1989.
1980s

Death , Law , Penalty , Quotes

“The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed Reform. As soon as men began to call themselves names, all hope of further amendment was lost.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

21 July 1827
Table Talk (1821–1834)

Men , Hope

“We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave, 2004) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Bush%20Betrayal.htm

“I believe a government that suppresses peaceful dissent is not showing strength; it is showing weakness and it is showing fear. History shows that regimes who fear their own people will eventually crumble, but strong institutions built on the consent of the governed endure long after any one individual is gone. That's why our strongest leaders -- from George Washington to Nelson Mandela -- have elevated the importance of building strong, democratic institutions over a thirst for perpetual power. Leaders who amend constitutions to stay in office only acknowledge that they failed to build a successful country for their people -- because none of us last forever. It tells us that power is something they cling to for its own sake, rather than for the betterment of those they purport to serve.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2015)

People , Fear , Peace , History

“And so abolitionists and freedmen and women and radical Republicans kept cajoling and kept rabble-rousing, and within a few years of the war’s end at Appomattox, we passed two more amendments guaranteeing voting rights, birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the 13th Amendment (December 2015)
Context: At its heart, the question of slavery was never simply about civil rights. It was about the meaning of America, the kind of country we wanted to be –- whether this nation might fulfill the call of its birth: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” that among those are life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. President Lincoln understood that if we were ever to fully realize that founding promise, it meant not just signing an Emancipation Proclamation, not just winning a war. It meant making the most powerful collective statement we can in our democracy: etching our values into our Constitution. He called it “a King’s cure for all the evils.” A hundred and fifty years proved the cure to be necessary but not sufficient. Progress proved halting, too often deferred. Newly freed slaves may have been liberated by the letter of the law, but their daily lives told another tale. They couldn’t vote. They couldn’t fill most occupations. They couldn’t protect themselves or their families from indignity or from violence. And so abolitionists and freedmen and women and radical Republicans kept cajoling and kept rabble-rousing, and within a few years of the war’s end at Appomattox, we passed two more amendments guaranteeing voting rights, birthright citizenship, equal protection under the law.

Women , War , Law

“We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution.”

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

1850s, Speech on the Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Context: We believe … in obedience to, and respect for the judicial department of government. We think its decisions on Constitutional questions, when fully settled, should control, not only the particular cases decided, but the general policy of the country, subject to be disturbed only by amendments of the Constitution as provided in that instrument itself. More than this would be revolution. But we think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. … If this important decision had been made by the unanimous concurrence of the judges, and without any apparent partisan bias, and in accordance with legal public expectation, and with the steady practice of the departments throughout our history, and had been in no part, based on assumed historical facts which are not really true; or, if wanting in some of these, it had been before the court more than once, and had there been affirmed and re-affirmed through a course of years, it then might be, perhaps would be, factious, nay, even revolutionary, to not acquiesce in it as a precedent.

Question , Thinking , Decision , Country

“I like the second better, but the first fits with the vampire watching what she can’t have.” I blinked. “What he can’t have,” I amended, flushing.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

“The spoken word converts individual knowledge into mutual knowledge, and there is no way back once you've gone over that cliff. Saying nothing was more amendable, and over time I'd come to see that it was usually your best course of action.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Way , Knowledge , Time

“Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?”

Henry David Thoreau book Civil Disobedience

Civil Disobedience (1849)

Law

“Your mother and I do not approve of drinking. Have you not heard of the Eighteenth Amendment?”

“Prohibition? I drink to its health whenever I can.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Health , Drink

“She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy.

I do have a knack for finding great women.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Women , Way , Happiness

“Jan Mickelson: One of my litmus test questions to find out what kind of thinking process a candidate has done on this, is to ask my test question. Test question is: do you think that Roe v. Wade is the law of land?
Ron Paul: Well, they call it the law of the land, but I want to clarify that by getting rid of it. I think this is one example of the courts overstepping their bounds tremendously. Texas had a law against this violent act, and it went in to the federal courts and the Supreme Court. They overruled the state law, which should have been legitimate, and then came down on the side of legalizing killing a fetus, even into the 3rd trimester. But the fastest way to accomplish this is not through a constitutional amendment, or waiting till you get enough justices to overrule. You can pass a law in the Congress, which denies jurisdiction to the federal courts. So if Iowa or Texas or any state passes a law against abortion, you can't get it into the federal courts, and the states would decide this issue, as they decide all issues of violence: murder, manslaughter, theft, all this things are supposed to be state issues.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Jan Mickelson, August 9, 2007 http://www.mickelson.libsyn.com/index.php?post_year=2007&post_month=08
2000s, 2006-2009

Justice , Law , Way , Question

“The papers inclosed will shew that the nauseous project of amendments has not yet been either dismissed or despatched. We are so deep in them now, that right or wrong some thing must be done.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Richard Peters (19 August 1789)
1780s

“By 1954, when Brown came up for decision, it had been apparent for some time that segregation rarely if ever produced equality. Quite aside from any question of psychology, the physical facilities provided for blacks were not as good as those provided for whites. That had been demonstrated in a long series of cases... The Court's realistic choice, therefore, was either to abandon the quest for equality by allowing segregation or to forbid segregation in order to achieve equality. There was no third choice. Either choice would violate one aspect of the original understanding, but there was no possibility of avoiding that. Since equality and segregation were mutually inconsistent, though the ratifiers did not understand that, both could not be honored. When that is seen, it is obvious the Court must choose equality and prohibit state-imposed segregation. The purpose that brought the fourteenth amendment into being was equality before the law, and equality, not separation, was written into the law.”

Robert Bork (1927–2012) American legal scholar

The Tempting of America (1990), page 82; on Brown v. Board of Education.

Law , Understanding , Question , Decision

“Questioner: Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy as Obama has expressly supported this policy? Why are you supporting it?
Frank: When you ask me that question I am gonna revert to my ethnic heritage and answer your question with a question: On what planet do you spend most of your time? […] As you stand there with a picture of the President defaced to look like Hitler, and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis, my answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table: I have no interest in doing it.”

Barney Frank (1940) American politician, former member of the House of Representatives for Massachusetts

Response to questioner at a town-meeting in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, broadcast on CNN (18 August 2009); YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGX-2oTNens.

Health , Question , Support , Effort

“The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.”

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

Writing for the court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Religion , Law , Support , Personality

“Nay, Spring was o'er-happy and knew not the reason,
And Summer dreamed sadly, for she thought all was ended
In her fulness of wealth that might not be amended;
But this is the harvest and the garnering season,
And the leaf and the blossom in the ripe fruit are blended.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

Love is Enough (1872), Song III: It Grew Up Without Heeding

Dreams , Spring , Summer , Wealth

“Another magazine wanted the Long Lost Hills in digest form. A hundred dollars. I was rich again. A time for amends, for righting the past. I sent my mother five dollars.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Time , Past

“I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever “fixed” at the Philadelphia Convention. Nor do I find the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice exhibited by the Framers particularly profound. To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous social transformation to attain the system of constitutional government, and its respect for the individual freedoms and human rights, we hold as fundamental today. When contemporary Americans cite “The Constitution,” they invoke a concept that is vastly different from what the Framers barely began to construct two centuries ago.”

Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993) Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

ThurgoodMarshall.com, Speeches. Constitutional Speech http://www.thurgoodmarshall.com/speeches/constitutional_speech.htm (May 6, 1987)

Wisdom , War , Justice , Sense

“The Celler-Kefauver Amendment to Section 7 of the Clayton Act has now been made effective by judicial ratification. The Supreme Court has said that the Act means exactly what it says… It prohibits acquisitions, either stock or assets, where competition in any line of commerce in any section of the country may be substantially lessened.”

Neil Fligstein (1951) American sociologist

Source: The transformation of corporate control, 1993, p. 177

Country

“To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a four-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972. The present two-year term requires most members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a four-year term for members of the House. And I urge your swift action. Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II. The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass. In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster. An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man. In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin. In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world. And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice. In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Hostility

“[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

Life , People , Understanding , Question

“It is part of the established tradition in the use of juries as instruments of public justice that the jury be a body truly representative of the community. For racial discrimination to result in the exclusion from Jury service of otherwise qualified groups not only violates our Constitution and the laws enacted under it, but is at war with our basic concepts of a democratic society and a representative government. We must consider this record in the light of these important principles. The fact that the written words of a state's laws hold out a promise that no such discrimination will be practiced is not enough. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that equal protection to all must be given — not merely promised.”

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

Writing for the court, Smith v. Texas, 33 U.S. 129 (1940).

War , Justice , Law , Communication

“• Amended provision under the Unprogrammed Fund earmarking P472.485 million to cover the terminal leave benefits of the Philippine Postal Corporation (PhilPost) employees when they were still under the defunct Bureau of Post;”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2014, Speech: Sponsorship Speech for the FY 2015 National Budget

“When man was first in the jungle, he took care of himself. When he entered a societal group, controls were necessarily imposed. But our society -- unlike most in the world -- presupposes that freedom and liberty are in a frame of reference that makes the individual, not government, the keeper of his tastes, beliefs, and ideas. That is the philosophy of the First Amendment; and it is the article of faith that sets us apart from most nations in the world.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Paris Adult Theatre I v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49 (1972)
Judicial opinions

World , Faith , Idea , Freedom

“It is not of special importance to me what the law says about marriage. It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me. Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact—and the furthest extension one can even imagine—of the Court's claimed power to create “liberties” that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Dissenting, Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, 192 L. Ed. 2d 609 (2015) ; decided June 26, 2015.
2010s

Marriage , People , Law , Imagination

“But the First Amendment protects against the Government; it does not leave us at the mercy of noblesse oblige. We would not uphold an unconstitutional statute merely because the Government promised to use it responsibly. […] The Government’s assurance that it will apply [a statutory provision] more restrictively than its language provides is pertinent only as an implicit acknowledgment of the potential constitutional problems with a more natural reading.”

John Roberts (1955) Chief Justice of the United States

United States v. Stevens, 559 U.S. ___, 130 S.Ct. 1577 (2010) (Opinion of the Court).

Nature , Problem , Reading

“First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.”

Anthony Kennedy (1936) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002) (Opinion of the Court).

Law , Thinking , Freedom

“Today's decision is the pinnacle of our Eighth Amendment death-is-different jurisprudence. Not only does it, like all of that jurisprudence, find no support in the text or history of the Eighth Amendment; it does not even have support in current social attitudes regarding the conditions that render an otherwise just death penalty inappropriate. Seldom has an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Atkins v. Virginia (2002) (dissenting).
2000s

Death , Penalty , History , Support

“Another matter before the Congress is legislation affecting the labor sections of the transportation act. Much criticism has been directed at the workings of this section and experience has shown that some useful amendment could be made to these provisions.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

“Unfortunately, this event appears to have been anything but an isolated incident. Our investigation showed that members of Ferguson’s police force frequently escalate, rather than defuse, tensions with the residents they encounter. And such actions are sometimes accompanied by First Amendment violations – including arresting people for talking back to officers, recording their public activities, or engaging in other conduct that is constitutionally protected.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

People , Appearance

“Of course, violence is never justified. But seen in this context – amid a highly toxic environment, defined by mistrust and resentment, stoked by years of bad feelings, and spurred by illegal and misguided practices – it is not difficult to imagine how a single tragic incident set off the city of Ferguson like a powder keg. In a sense, members of the community may not have been responding only to a single isolated confrontation, but also to a pervasive, corrosive, and deeply unfortunate lack of trust – attributable to numerous constitutional violations by their law enforcement officials including First Amendment abuses, unreasonable searches and seizures, and excessive and dangerous use of force; exacerbated by severely disproportionate use of these tactics against African Americans; and driven by overriding pressure from the city to use law enforcement not as a public service, but as a tool for raising revenue.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

Law , Feeling , Imagination , Search

“That's why my generation thinks we need a constitutional amendment to protect the sanctity of marriage that guarantees that, in America, the only marriage to be recognized is the marriage between a man and a woman! In the house of God! There are so many things in America that have changed. That should never change. And you listen to me: If it does, you can kiss this country goodbye.”

John Hagee (1940) American pastor, theologian and saxophonist

Hagee: Gay Marriage = 'Kiss This Country Goodbye'
Right Wing Watch
People for the American Way
2008-05-20
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/hagee-gay-marriage-kiss-country-goodbye
2011-08-06

God , Marriage , Kiss , Thinking

“The case for originalism is quite different. It is that in our system of government, written laws (statutes and constitutional provisions) are supposed to provide stable rules around which society can organize itself. Such rules are presumed to remain in place until amended or repealed by the people. Originalism is aimed at preserving the laws enacted by the people or their representatives, and at preserving stability and predictability in our legal system.”

Thomas Rex Lee (1964) Utah Supreme Court justice

A Dialogue with Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas R. Lee https://web.archive.org/web/20150120094848/www.attorneyatlawmagazine.com/salt-lake-city/dialogue-utah-supreme-court-justice-thomas-r-lee/

People , Law

“Sharron Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical…
Bill Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now.
Sharron Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems.”

Sharron Angle (1949) Former member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007

interview with talk radio host Bill Manders early in senatorial campaign
Sharron Angle Floated '2nd Amendment Remedies' As 'Cure' For 'The Harry Reid Problems'
2010-06-06
The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/16/sharron-angle-floated-2nd_n_614003.html

Law , Hope , Feeling , History

“Over time, it’s clear that this culture of enforcement actions being disconnected from the public safety needs of the community – and often to the detriment of community residents – has given rise to a disturbing and unconstitutional pattern or practice. Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them. According to the Police Department’s own records, its officers frequently infringe on residents’ First Amendment rights. They interfere with the right to record police activities. And they make enforcement decisions based on the way individuals express themselves.”

Eric Holder (1951) 82nd Attorney General of the United States

2010s, Update on Investigations in Ferguson (2015)

People , Way , Communication , Decision

“The Second Amendment is about protecting your right to go deer hunting the same way that the First Amendment is about protecting your right to publish poetry.”

James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger

Tools For Survival (2009)

Way

“Any reform of the Security Council will require an amendment of the Charter of the United Nations under Article 108. Some observers feel that the veto power as practised since 1945 is the Achilles heel of the United Nations and of the contemporary international order. While a majority of United Nations Member States and observer States would agree to amend article 27 (3) of the Charter, this may be blocked by any of the members possessing the power of veto. Abandoning the veto, therefore, will have to envisage a substantial quid pro quo. Workable trade-offs could be enhanced voting weights for the permanent five in the General Assembly in a reformed and more empowered Assembly.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

Feeling

“Once again, my family and I find ourselves being assaulted by the obscenity that is Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Sunday October 5th, my husband's killer will once again air his voice from what masquerades as a prison, and spew his thoughts and ideas at another college commencement. Mumia Abu-Jamal will be heard and honored as a victim and a hero by a pack of adolescent sycophants at Goddard College in Vermont. Despite the fact that 33 years ago, he loaded his gun with special high-velocity ammunition designed to kill in the most devastating fashion, then used that gun to rip my husband's freedom from him--today, Mumia Abu-Jamal will be lauded as a freedom fighter. Undoubtedly the administrators at Goddard who first accepted, then enthusiastically supported Abu-Jamal as their speaker will be moved by his "important message" when, if one distills that message to its basic meaning, it amounts to nothing more than the same worn out hatred for this country and everyone in law enforcement that Mumia Abu-Jamal has harbored his entire life. Many at Goddard College have said that this is a matter of Abu-Jamal's First Amendment right to speak and be heard. What a convenient way to dodge their responsibility to take a moral position on this situation. This is not a matter of First Amendment rights -- it's a matter of right and wrong. Across the country, people have been voicing their disgust with the wrong that the college is about to commit by allowing a convicted cop-killer to speak to them. Is this the message to be heard? How could they allow him to speak when Danny no longer has a voice? It is my opinion that all murderers should forfeit their right to free speech when they take the life of an innocent person. I have repeatedly seen college administrators deny conservative and religious speakers access to their campuses when even the tiniest minority feel their message is in some way offensive. What could be more offensive than having a person who violently took the life of another imparting his "unique perspective" on your students? Let's be honest. The instructors, administrators and graduates at Goddard College embrace having this killer as their commencement speaker not despite the fact that he brutally murdered a cop, but because he brutally murdered a cop. Otherwise, like so many other speakers that have been denied access to college campuses across the country, Goddard's administration would have lived up to their moral responsibility and pulled the plug on this travesty long ago. Shame on Goddard College and all associated with that school for choosing to honor an arrogant remorseless killer as their commencement speaker. Unfortunately, this is something that I am certain they will be proud of for the rest of their lives.”

Mumia Abu-Jamal (1954) Prisoner, Journalist, Broadcaster, Author, Activist

Statement http://6abc.com/news/mumia-abu-jamal-speech-met-with-vigil-for-slain-officer/337357/ by Maureen Faulkner, widow of Daniel Faulkner, upon Abu-Jamal's delivering the Commencement Address at Goddard College in 2014
About

Life , People , School , Family

“The Senate version of the 2015 National Budget will define savings in FULL COMPLIANCE WITH THE SUPREME COURT DECISION on the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Our committee accepted all of Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago's points and took note of her concerns. I believe Senator Santiago based her speech on the NEP version, NOT the one the Senate has amended. However, the Senate version is never going to adopt the version of the NEP as regard to their definition of savings.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Escudero, F. [Francis]. (2014, November 26). Retrieved from Official Facebook Page of Francis Escudero https://www.facebook.com/senchizescudero/posts/10152871070040610/
2014, Facebook

Decision

“For the Second Amendment to do its job, the other side must become much better informed. I watched an action-adventure program last night that asserted that the famous AK-47 — the original peoples' rifle (and Authority's greatest mistake) — is rare in this country, and that the only ones here were originally smuggled in from the Middle East, or possibly from South America. The idiots who wrote this mess seemed unaware that after legal imports — mostly from China — were illegally cut off by executive order, they began to be manufactured here.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"Tastes Like Chicken".

People , Night , Country

“Under the Alliance Government, we minorities were allocated eight seats, then they were reduced to five seats and now we have only three seats in this house. At this trend, we minorities may not be represented in Parliament in future. But, I trust in our SDL-led Coalition Government and humbly request that our seats in this house be increased from three to at least five when the 1997 Constitution amendments are done.”

Kenneth Zinck (1959) Fijian politician

Calls for greater minority representation in the House of Representatives, 10 August 2005

Future , Housing

“Twas the night before Christmas, the office was closed,
The transom was shut, the staff home in repose;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
But St. Nicholas won’t be coming because this is a Designated National Security Site within the meaning of Para 4.12 of Section 3 of the Official Secrets Act (Amended) and unauthorised intrusion on such a site is an arrestable offense …”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014)

Secret , Home , Christmas , Night

“This leads to the second most dangerous, and very disingenuous claim by Fair Tax advocates, that it repeals the income tax. It does not. The Fair Tax Bill merely repeals various sections of the federal tax code relating to the income tax. The bill leaves the 16th Amendment intact; most tellingly, it uses tepid language about the 16th Amendment, saying only that Congress “finds” that it “should be repealed.”
This clearly leaves an opening for Congress to reinstate the income tax once the national sales tax is in place. Given the addiction to spending and the lack of integrity that pervades our government, I’m convinced that even if the Fair Tax passes, it’ll be implemented without doing away with the income tax — thus giving us the worst of both worlds. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some congressman championed “bringing back” the income tax as the only solution to a future “debt crisis.””

R. Lee Wrights (1958–2017) American gubernatorial candidate

2012, " The Fair Tax Isn't Fair, It's a Farce http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=7101"

World , Future

“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

Dependency

“For as when much superfluous matter has gathered in simple bodies, nature makes repeated efforts to remove and purge it away, thereby promoting the health of these bodies, so likewise as regards that composite body the human race, when every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove elsewhere, every region being equally crowded and over-peopled, and when human craft and wickedness have reached their highest pitch, it must needs come about that the world will purge herself in one or another of these three ways, to the end that men, becoming few and contrite, may amend their lives and live with more convenience.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1 Ch. 5 (as translated by Ninian Hill Thomson)
Discourses on Livy (1517)

Men , People , Health , World

“John C. Calhoun's last speech had a bitter attack on Mr. Jefferson for his amendment to the Ordinance of '87 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory. Calhoun was in a dying condition – was too weak to read it. So James M. Mason, a Virginia Senator, read it in the Senate about two weeks before Calhoun's death, March 1850.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)

Death , Reading

“That Amendment requires the state to be a neutral in its relations with groups of religious believers and nonbelievers; it does not require the state to be their adversary. State power is no more to be used so as to handicap religions than it is to favor them.”

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

Writing for the court in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947) about the consequences of the First Amendments Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause for the separation of church and state.

Religion

“Surely they knew that the very idea of the future came in an American box - complete with instructions for assembling a Constitution, a MacDonald's hamburger franchise, a row of Marriot hotels and a First Amendment.”

Lewis H. Lapham (1935) American journalist

Source: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 10, Envoi, p. 237

Idea , Future , Box

“Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder. Yet in essence, that is what you have asked our loved ones to do, through an ill-contrived and totally naive campaign against the Second Amendment.”

Charlton Heston (1923–2008) American actor

Speech to the National Press Club (14 September 1997)

Love

“I’ve always wondered if people who block each other from expressing their opinions do so because they have so little confidence in their own. To me, encountering an opposing point of view is a chance to gain a deeper understanding of the issues at stake… and develop my own point of view. But the first thing you’ve got to do is you’ve got to let people speak and you’ve got to listen. And that’s what the first amendment is all about. That’s what really distinguishes this country from others.”

Michael Bloomberg (1942) American businessman and politician, former mayor of New York City

http://ww.tufts.edu/home/feature/?p=commencement2007&p4=4
Speaking Out

People , Confidence , Understanding , Chance

“The nice men in periwigs who came up with the Fourth Amendment were recklessly naive to imagine that branches of a government, each of whose power is enhanced when the power of the other branches grows, would serve to check one another.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Quacking Over Ducksters As Freedoms Go Poof" http://www.wnd.com/2014/01/quacking-over-ducksters-as-freedoms-go-poof/, WorldNetDaily.com, January 3, 2014.
2010s, 2014

Men , Imagination

“She says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France which has among the toughest gun laws anywhere in the world, and 130 people were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood. Her plan is to disarm law abiding Americans, abolishing the Second Amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. No good. Not going to happen, folks. … She wants to take away American's guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us. Let them come into the country, we don't have guns. Let them come in, let them have all the fun they want.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, June, Speech about the Orlando Shooting (June 13, 2016)

People , World , Law , Guy

“I understand how strongly so many of my fellow veterans and citizens feel about the flag and I understand the powerful sentiment in state legislatures for such an amendment. I feel the same sense of outrage. But I step back from amending the Constitution to relieve that outrage. The First Amendment exists to insure that freedom of speech and expression applies not just to that with which we agree or disagree, but also that which we find outrageous. I would not amend that great shield of democracy to hammer a few miscreants. The flag will be flying proudly long after they have slunk away.”

Colin Powell (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

1990s, Letter to Patrick Leahy (1999)

Feeling , Democracy , Understanding , Sense

“[N]ot once in the history of the American Republic has this Court ever suggested the death penalty is categorically impermissible. The reason is obvious: It is impossible to hold unconstitutional that which the Constitution explicitly contemplates. The Fifth Amendment provides that "[n]o person shall be held to answer for a capital… crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury," and that no person shall be "deprived of life… without due process of law."”

Antonin Scalia (1936–2016) former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Concurring, Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. ___ (2015).
2010s

Life , Death , Law , Penalty

“Reclamation. Our country has a well defined policy of reclamation established under statutory authority. This policy should be continued and made a self-sustaining activity administered in a manner that will meet local requirements and bring our and lands into a profitable state of cultivation as fast as there is a market for their products. Legislation is pending based on the report of the Fact Finding Commission for the proper relief of those needing extension of time in which to meet their payments on irrigated land, and for additional amendments and reforms of our reclamation laws, which are all exceedingly important and should be enacted at once.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Law , Time , Country

“I publicly appeal to our President, our Prime Minister and the members of our Government to withdraw the Bill until such time as proper consultations can be held and appropriate amendments made.”

Petero Mataca (1933–2014) Catholic archbishop

Statement to the media, 23 June 2005 http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=23578, on the government's proposal to establish a Reconciliation and Unity Commission (excerpts)

Time

“[A man’s actions] are illegal if a woman decides [it creates a hostile environment], and if a man committed the ‘offense’… Who defines ‘hostile environment’? The woman. Not even the man’s intent makes a legal difference. In all other criminal behavior, intent makes all the difference. Even in homicide. Sexual harassment legislation in its present form makes all man unequal to all women. It is in blatant violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection without regard of sex. Thus the political will to protect only women prevails over the constitutional mandate to protect both sexes equally.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part III: Government as substitute husband, p. 288.

Women , Hostility , Sex , Behavior

“One opinion that is trotted out for propaganda, for the propaganda parade, is my dissent in Hudson vs. McMillian. The conclusion reached by the long arms of the critics is that I supported the beating of prisoners in that case. Well, one must either be illiterate or fraught with malice to reach that conclusion. Though one can disagree with my dissent, and certainly the majority of the court disagreed, no honest reading can reach such a conclusion. Indeed, we took the case to decide the quite narrow issue, whether a prisoner's rights were violated under the 'cruel and unusual punishment' clause of the Eighth Amendment as a result of a single incident of force by the prison guards which did not cause a significant injury. In the first section of my dissent, I stated the following: 'In my view, a use of force that causes only insignificant harm to a prisoner may be immoral; it may be tortuous; it may be criminal, and it may even be remediable under other provisions of the Federal Constitution. But it is not cruel and unusual punishment.' Obviously, beating prisoners is bad. But we did not take the case to answer this larger moral question or a larger legal question of remedies under other statutes or provisions of the Constitution. How one can extrapolate these larger conclusions from the narrow question before the court is beyond me, unless, of course, there's a special segregated mode of analysis.”

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

1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)

Question , Support , Reading

“Those in the Ivy League, Hollywood, the media, the leftist rich, and most schools and universities who, like Obama, consider themselves superior intellectuals earmarked by some demented destiny to implement their pagan, socialist, and anti-human ideology in the United States. They first mean to destroy the Second Amendment, and then, safe to be tyrants, though cowards all, they intend remake in their own worthless image those Americans who still work hard, who believe in and are willing to fight to defend liberty, and who have learned the Founders' key lesson, namely, that the federal government must always be seen as an enemy of freedom and therefore must be kept in check and opposed to the hilt whenever necessary. Perhaps it would be best if Obama and his Ivy-League elite studied the words of a man they hail an icon of their party and with whom they share a liking for slavery, but who actually is a man they do not in the least understand.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in "Obama and his party offer America's young … death, misery, and slavery" http://non-intervention.com/1143/obama-and-his-party-offer-america%E2%80%99s-young-%E2%80%A6-death-misery-and-slavery/ (2013), by M. Scheuer, Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention.
2010s

School , Understanding , Study , Freedom

“The Fifth Amendment is an old friend and a good friend, one of the great landmarks in men's struggle to be free of tyranny, to be decent and civilized.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

An Almanac of Liberty (1954), p. 238
Other speeches and writings

Men

“It was not my finest moment," Henry said. "My car and I have since made amends."
"His electric car," Gansey inserted with subtlety, in case Blue had missed the environmental ramifications.
Blue narrowed her eyes at Gansey and then pointed out, "You could bike to Aglionby from here."
Henry wagged a finger. "True, true. But it is important to practise safe bicycling, and they have not yet made a helmet to accommodate my hair.”

Maggie Stiefvater (1981) American writer

pg 137
The Raven Cycle Series, The Raven King (2016)

Cars

“One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment, Potter.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Statement to Justice Potter Stewart on the arrest of peacefully protesting Vietnam War veterans on steps of the Supreme Court, in The Court Years, 1939-1975: The Autobiography of William O. Douglas‎ (1981), p. 234
Other speeches and writings