Quotes about clause (91 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“They used to have clauses and contracts where you can't get bad publicity or you'd get fired. But now bad publicity is good publicity. I just keep working and don't think about it much.”

Liza Minnelli (1946) American actress and singer

October 6, 2007 St. Petersburg Times by Shannon Breen.

Thinking

“[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

“As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: Our decision in Lee v. Weisman conspicuously avoided using the supposed test but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so. The secret of the Lemon test's survival, I think, is that it is so easy to kill. It is there to scare us (and our audience) when we wish it to do so, but we can command it to return to the tomb at will. Such a docile and useful monster is worth keeping around, at least in a somnolent state; one never knows when one might need him.”

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

Lamb's Chapel v. Center Moriches Union Free School District, 508 U.S. 384, 398-99 (1993) (concurring) (citations omitted).
1990s

Children , Secret , School , Justice

“We laughed about all the kids who believed in the Santa Clause myth and got nothing but a bunch of cheap plastic toys. 'Years from now, when all the junk they got is broken and long forgotten,' Dad said, ' you'll still have your stars.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Star

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure , World , Peace , Law

“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

“A license cannot be revoked because a man is redheaded or because he was divorced, except for a calling, if such there be, for which redheadedness or an unbroken marriage may have some rational bearing. If a State licensing agency lays bare its arbitrary action, or if the State law explicitly allows it to act arbitrarily, that is precisely the kind of State action which the Due Process Clause forbids.”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U.S. 442, 470 (1954).
Judicial opinions

Marriage , Law

“Skinner: …it should be placed on record that, according to my hon. Friends who worked tirelessly in the Committee to oppose the provisions of the Bill, including this clause, the Liberal spokesman was not there half the time.”

Dennis Skinner (1932) British politician

1980s

Time

“If we're looking for a rationale other than "Loughner was nuts," I think the more relevant facts about him are that he was an atheist who detested religion and religious people, made lots of references to satanic New Age "conscience dreaming" (sic) and was involved in the occult.
When a fellow participant on a UFO website wrote a lengthy response to Loughner's question about "what is wrong or right with the current date?" which included the subordinate clause, "a day in Christ is as a thousand years," Loughner fixated on that one line, railing, "I won't listen to that fictitious crap without the author. This is laughable to notice a gospel or writing related to Christ."”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"Mud Libel" (19 January 2011).
2011

People , Age , Religion , Dreams

“The Court today finds that the Powers That Be, up in Albany, have conspired to effect an establishment of the Satmar Hasidim. I do not know who would be more surprised at this discovery: the Founders of our Nation or Grand Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum, founder of the Satmar. The Grand Rebbe would be astounded to learn that after escaping brutal persecution and coming to America with the modest hope of religious toleration for their ascetic form of Judaism, the Satmar had become so powerful, so closely allied with Mammon, as to have become an establishment of the Empire State. And the Founding Fathers would be astonished to find that the Establishment Clause — which they designed to insure that no one powerful sect or combination of sects could use political or governmental power to punish dissenters — has been employed to prohibit characteristically and admirably American accommodation of the religious practices (or more precisely, cultural peculiarities) of a tiny minority sect. I, however, am not surprised. Once this Court has abandoned text and history as guides, nothing prevents it from calling religious toleration the establishment of religion.”

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

Board of Ed. of Kiryas Joel v. Grumet (1994) (dissenting) (citations and some internal quotation marks omitted).
1990s

Religion , Hope , History , Learning

“All treaties between nations are valid only with the reservation clause: rebus sic stantibus. They do not pledge a State for ever.”

Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–1896) Historian, political writer

Statement (1869), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 83.

“Chris Wallace: You talk a lot about the Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all unconstitutional.
Ron Paul: Technically, they are. … There’s no authority [in the Constitution]. Article I, Section 8 doesn't say I can set up an insurance program for people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause. … That is such an extreme liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and that's what we have to reverse — that very notion that you're presenting.
Chris Wallace: Congressman, it's not just a liberal view. It was the decision of the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Ron Paul: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal, too, and we had to reverse that.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Fox News Sunday

2011-05-15, quoted in * Ron Paul Calls Social Security and Medicare Unconstitutional, Compares Them to ‘Slavery’

Think Progress

2011-05-15

Ian

Millhiser

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/15/166363/paul-ss-medicare-slavery/

2011-08-28
2011

People , School , Decision , Parting

“The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in holding "unlawful [religious] meetings... to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom...."”

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

And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country soon after the establishment of official religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.
Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

People , Books , Faith , Religion

“There are earth-shattering events going on around you, Lydia. men are scheming, debating, plotting, intriguing for the future of our country but, despite all their talk, it is the little children who are really creating the future. While these big men spend hours talking and arguing, you and your friends are busy building a nation. I don't exaggerate: all societies must be based on justice, love, trust and sharing. Though only 3, you are already practising them in your playgroup. Left to yourselves, you black and white children are actually doing that, while the politicians nervously insert clauses into bills to guard their investments and vested interest, or to protect people from people. You don't need to be protected from children of other races, because to you they are simply your friends, and you accept them totally for what they are. Your playgroup is based on trust. That is a precious commodity. I hope you never lose it. When men in Namibia act on that lesson we too, like you, can begin to build a nation.”

Colin Winter (1928–1981) Bishop of Damaraland noted for opposing apartheid; exiled Bishop of Namibia; Irish-British Anglican bishop

"An Open Letter to Lydia Morrow" Pro Veritate, V.15, No. 4 (September 1976) http://disa.nu.ac.za/articledisplaypage.asp?filename=PVSep76&articletitle=An+open+letter+to+Lydia+Morrow+from+Colin+Winter%2C+Bishop+of+Damaraland+in+exile+++++++++&searchtype=browse. Pro Veritate http://disa.nu.ac.za/journals/jourpvexpand.htm was a Christian monthly journal published in South Africa from 1962 to 1977. Lydia Morrow was the small daughter of Winter's friends and associates, Edward and Laureen Morrow.

Love , Men , Children , People

“I say, thou mad March hare,
I wonder how ye dare
Open your jangling jaws
To preach in any clause,
Like prating popping daws,
Against her excellence,
Against her reverence,
Against her pre-eminence,
Against her magnificence,
That never did offence.”

John Skelton (1460–1529) English poet

Replication Against Certain Young Scholars (date unknown, but certainly after 1523, generally considered to be among Skelton's final works), a criticism of heretical thought among the young men then attending universities, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Madness

“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

“It is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he saith, “Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up.””

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

Book I
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Nature , Knowledge

“One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society. It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many argue that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct. If that view is accepted, the Bowers decision in effect says the State of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision — wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just society. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes. Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process.”

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

[Unenumerated Rights and the Dictates of Judicial Restraint, Address to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Legal Studies, Stanford University. Palo Alto, California., http://web.archive.org/web/20080627022153/http://www.andrewhyman.com/1986kennedyspeech.pdf, 24 July 1986 to 1 August 1986, 13] (Also quoted at p. 443 of Kennedy's 1987 confirmation transcript http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/senate/judiciary/sh100-1037/browse.html).

People , Decision , Sense

“Personally, I feel that if the Lau Provincial Council votes for this Bill it means that they are supporting the amnesty clause, which is what the whole Bill is about. Do they understand that what they are actually doing is agreeing in principle to the removal of the late Turaga na Tui Nayau and condoning the coup perpetrators who were the very thugs who removed the Tui Nayau and brought anarchy to Fiji in the year 2000.”

Koila Nailatikau (1953) Fijian politician

On the government's proposed Reconciliation and Unity Commission, 24 July, 2005

Feeling , Understanding , Support , Personality

“I started out my political life as a bedwetting liberal. Young, idealistic — and dumb. Then I started paying income taxes. Thankfully I realized sooner than most the difference between what I earn and my "take-home" pay. For a few years I guess you could have called me a conservative. I was troubled, though, by the penchant conservatives have for directing the social lives of people. That led me straight to the libertarian philosophy. Simply put, I believe in freedom. I believe the Constitution should be amended with a clause which states that neither the federal nor any state government shall make any activity that does not violate, through force or fraud, a persons right to life, liberty or property, a crime. I firmly believe that if liberty is to be preserved in America, it will be libertarian thought, if not the Libertarian Party, that saves it.”

Neal Boortz (1945) American author, journalist, and radio host

Life , People , Home , Fraud

“Had Congress undertaken to guarantee religious freedom, or any particular species of it, they would then have had a pretense to interfere in a subject they have nothing to do with. Each state, so far as the clause in question does not interfere, must be left to the operation of its own principles.”

James Iredell (1751–1799) one of the first Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States

July 30, 1788, p. 172.
North Carolina's Debates, in Convention, on the adoption of the Federal Constitution (1787)

Question , Freedom

“Labor is not, as some have erroneously supposed, a penal clause of the original curse. There was labor, bright, healthful, unfatiguing, in unfallen Paradise. By sin, labor became drudgery — the earth was restrained from her spontaneous fertility, and the strong arm of the husbandman was required, not to develop, but to " subdue " it. But labor in itself is noble, and is necessary for the ripe unfolding of the highest life.”

William Morley Punshon (1824–1881) English Nonconformist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 367.

Life , Health , Strong

“A servant with this clause
Makes drudgery divine:
Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,
Makes that and th' action fine.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Source: The Temple (1633), The Elixir, Lines 17-20

Law

“The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. And yet, though this truth would seem so clear, and the importance of a well regulated militia would seem so undeniable, it cannot be disguised, that among the American people there is a growing indifference to any system of militia discipline, and a strong disposition, from a sense of its burthens, to be rid of all regulations. How it is practicable to keep the people duly armed without some organization, it is difficult to see. There is certainly no small danger, that indifference may lead to disgust, and disgust to contempt; and thus gradually undermine all the protection intended by this clause of our national bill of rights.”

Joseph Story book Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States

Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), p. 708 http://books.google.com/books?id=Ennw5lvHmcoC&pg=PA708&dq=%22The+right+of+the+citizens+to+keep%22.

People , Truth , Peace , Nature

“The [Labour] moderates split off and that split of the moderates delayed the realignment of British politics for at least one generation and possibly two, because as a conservative passionately believing in freedom under the law and believing that socialism cannot stand for that, the realignment - you hear me say my job is to stay in long enough so that everyone knows that socialism and the British character do not mix, so socialism has got to go - is to get the fundamental realignment which I think is in keeping with the British character, which is two parties, a free enterprise party, because if you have political freedom under the rule of law you have got to have economic freedom as well. It is to bring about that can only be done really by eventually the Labour Party splitting off the Left and rejecting the Clause 4 and the command economy, and then we really should get a realignment.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Interview for The Standard (13 March 1987) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106595
Second term as Prime Minister

Law , Thinking , Freedom , Passion

“"Come on! You too, Will."
"If you must call me anything, you may address me as Most Excellent Testamentary Clause," said the sun bear.
"Claws?" said Suzy, as she tilted the chair to speed the bear on its way. "Orright, Claws, hop to it."
"No, no, no," protested the sun bear. "Most Excellent-"
"Claws it is," said Suzy loudly. "After you, Claws."
"I said… oh… just don't speak to me," huffed the Will as it waddled after Arthur.”

Garth Nix (1963) Australian fantasy writer

Source: The Keys to the Kingdom series, Grim Tuesday (2004), p. 300.

Way , Sun , Speed

“The word "essay" means to try out, test, probe. In the essay style, successive clauses and sentences are not produced by an overarching logic, but by association; the impression that prose gives is that it can go anywhere in a manner wholly unpredictable.”

Stanley Fish (1938) American academic

Source: How To Write A Sentence And How To Read One (2011), Chapter 6, The Additive Style, p. 62

Success

“What became a problem is there was a clause that allowed investors to cover losses. As long as you made losses one year, you could carry them over to the next and to the next. And because of that they would pay no taxes. So this fellow takes all the gold away and he says he makes losses and so he does not pay us anything. So he is the only one that is being protected. Those of us who are losing our resources are not protected. This is the thing that created the kind of debate that we had and we had to renegotiate.”

Jakaya Kikwete (1950) Tanzanian politician and president

On Tanzania's mining sector.
Interviews, Interview with Financial Times, 2007-10-04 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d8a07e28-72a3-11dc-b7ff-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check1/

Problem , Loss

“Editions and Revisions. The printed Bible text of Luther had the same fate as the written text of the old Itala and Jerome's Vulgate. It passed through innumerable improvements and mis-improvements. The orthography and inflections were modernized, obsolete words removed, the versicular division introduced (first in a Heidelberg reprint, 1568), the spurious clause of the three witnesses inserted in 1 John 5:7 (first by a Frankfurt publisher, 1574), the third and fourth books of Ezra and the third book of the Maccabees added to the Apocrypha, and various other changes effected, necessary and unnecessary, good and bad. Elector August of Saxony tried to control the text in the interest of strict Lutheran orthodoxy, and ordered the preparation of a standard edition (1581). But it was disregarded outside of Saxony.
Gradually no less than eleven or twelve recensions came into use, some based on the edition of 1545, others on that of 1546. The most careful recension was that of the Canstein Bible Institute, founded by a pious nobleman, Carl Hildebrand von Canstein (1667-1719) in connection with Francke's Orphan House at Halle. It acquired the largest circulation and became the textus receptus of the German Bible.
With the immense progress of biblical learning in the present century, the desire for a timely revision of Luther's version was more and more felt. Revised versions with many improvements were prepared by Joh.- Friedrich von Meyer, a Frankfurt patrician (1772-1849), and Dr. Rudolf Stier (1800-1862), but did not obtain public authority.
At last a conservative official revision of the Luther Bible was inaugurated by the combined German church governments in 1863, with a view and fair prospect of superseding all former editions in public use.”

Philip Schaff (1819–1893) American Calvinist theologian

Luther's Bible club

Fate , Books , Learning , Change

“What is a club in any case? Not the buildings or the directors or the people who are paid to represent it. It’s not the television contracts, get-out clauses, marketing departments or executive boxes. It’s the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging, the pride in your city. It’s a small boy clambering up stadium steps for the very first time, gripping his father’s hand, gawping at that hallowed stretch of turf beneath him and, without being able to do a thing about it, falling in love.”

Bobby Robson (1933–2009) English association football player and manager

Source: " It's the noise, the passion, the feeling of belonging": What does NUFC mean to you? http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sir-bobby-robson-quote-tell-6260751" at Evening Chronicle, November 1, 2013.

Love , People , Feeling , Boy

“We shall not bind ourselves by treaties. We shall not allow ourselves to be entangled by treaties. We reject all clauses on plunder and violence, but we shall welcome all clauses containing provisions for good-neighbourly relations and all economic agreements; we cannot reject these.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Concluding Speech Following the Discussion On the Report of Peace (8 November 1917) http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/25-26/26c.htm; Collected Works, Vol. 26.
1910s

“I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to 'require[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary'. But interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.”

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

Lee v. Weisman (1992, dissenting) ; decided June 24, 1992
1990s

Science , Holiday

“The Bill … does manifest some of the major consequences. It shows first that it is an inherent consequence of accession to the Treaty of Rome that this House and Parliament will lose their legislative supremacy. It will no longer be true that law in this country is made only by or with the authority of Parliament… The second consequence … is that this House loses its exclusive control—upon which its power and authority has been built over the centuries—over taxation and expenditure. In future, if we become part of the Community, moneys received in taxation from the citizens of this country will be spent otherwise than upon a vote of this House and without the opportunity … to debate grievance and to call for an account of the way in which those moneys are to be spent. For the first time for centuries it will be true to say that the people of this country are not taxed only upon the authority of the House of Commons. The third consequence which is manifest on the face of the Bill, in Clause 3 among other places, is that the judicial independence of this country has to be given up. In future, if we join the Community, the citizens of this country will not only be subject to laws made elsewhere but the applicability of those laws to them will be adjudicated upon elsewhere; and the law made elsewhere and the adjudication elsewhere will override the law which is made here and the decisions of the courts of this realm.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1972/feb/17/european-communities-bill in the House of Commons (17 February 1972) on the Second Reading of the European Communities Bill
1970s

Money , People , Law , Way

“Several decisions of this Court make clear that freedom of personal choice in matters of marriage and family life is one of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.... That right necessarily includes the right of a woman to decide whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.”

Potter Stewart (1915–1985) American judge

Concurring, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 169-170 (1973).

Life , Marriage , Family , Decision

“If we do not hold the Rhine permanently [Foch told them] there is no neutralization, no disarmament, no written clause of any nature, which can prevent Germany from breaking out across it and gaining the upper hand. No aid could arrive in time from England or America to save France from complete defeat.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Nature , Time

“Protocols:
Number 10, paras. 6,7
A scheme of government should come ready made from one brain, because it will never be clinched firmly if it is allowed to split into fractional parts in the minds of many. It is allowable, therefore, for us to have cognizance of the scheme of action but not to discuss it lest we disturb its artfulness, and interdependence of its component parts, the practical force of the secret meaning of each clause. To discuss and make alteration in a labor of this kind by means of numerous votings is to impress upon it the stamp of all ratiocinations and misunderstandings which have failed to penetrate the depth and nexus of its plottings….
These schemes will not turn existing institutions upside down just yet, They will only effect changes in their economy and consequently in the whole combined movement of their progress, which will thus be directed along the paths laid down in our schemes.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Secret , Art , Change , Parting

“Justice Antonin Scalia fundamentally changed the way the Supreme Court interpreted both statutes and the Constitution. In both contexts, his focus on text and its original public meaning often translated into more limited criminal prohibitions and broader constitutional protections for defendants. ‎As to statutes, Justice Scalia refocused the court’s attention on the text of the laws Congress enacted. Although he may not have succeeded in getting the court to forswear even looking at legislative history, he did persuade his colleagues to start — and very often end — the analysis with the text. In the criminal context, he limited terms like extortion and property to their common law core and found the residual clause of the Armed Career Criminal Act as unconstitutionally vague as “the phrase ‘fire-engine red, light pink, maroon, navy blue, or colors that otherwise involve shades of red.” When it came to interpreting the Constitution, he likewise put the text first and emphasized that the terms must be understood in light of their original public meaning. He believed that the words should be understood the way the framers used them. This did not mean that constitutional protections were frozen in time.”

Paul Clement (lawyer)

In Scalia, criminal defendants have lost a great defender: Paul Clement https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/19/scalia-funeral-constitution-defendants-jury-paul-clement-column/80575460/ (February 19, 2016)

Justice , Law , Color , Way

“Missouri’s term limits, for example, serve as a restriction, yet Missourians overwhelmingly support them, and they are in effect for members of the Legislature. Noncompete clauses and nepotism laws restrict employment, but they are used to stop unethical behavior. Stopping legislators from immediately becoming lobbyists following their terms is not only common sense, it mirrors similar laws and practices frequently followed in the private sector. I believe this world is made up of imperfect people. Our political process is certainly no different. I also recognize that no law, rule or regulation will fix every problem, but they can certainly help.”

Jay Ashcroft (1973)

Get serious about meaningful ethics reform http://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/get-serious-about-meaningful-ethics-reform/article_d9a98fc0-9172-54af-a084-335bc70fa3ed.html (March 10, 2016)

People , World , Law , Behavior

“Affirmative action, rightly understood, would justify a wide variety of outreach programs for those whose lives have been stultified by poverty, broken families, bad schools, and neighborhoods filled with drugs, crime and gangs. One can heartily commend a program for tutoring young blacks, or young whites, who had never had a genuine teacher in a real classroom. One cannot, however, commend a program of raising the grades of young blacks, but not young whites, without having raised their skills. And what possible justification can there be there for giving scholarship assistance to the child of a black middle-class family, while denying it to a poor white? Can one imagine a more crass disregard for the genuine meaning of the Equal Protection Clause? The priests of this new religion of 'affirmative action' are not without material interests. Hundreds of millions of corporate dollars are spent annually on 'sensitivity training'. Within the universities, centers for black, brown and women's (i. e., feminist) studies are being established, with vast amount of patronage bestowed upon them. Traditional courses in Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare and the Bible continue to appear in the catalogs, but they are increasingly taught by 'deconstructionists', who have no interest in the texts, but only in subjective reactions to the texts.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)

Women , School , Family , Religion

“The definition of self-respect contains a clause to include pitiless contempt for some other class. … English society is impregnated from top to bottom with this spirit. The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Ch, 3.
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929)

People , Hell

“Blacks got federal passports implying that they were citizens… The Articles of Confederation stated that "the free inhabitants of these states… shall be entitled to all privileges of immunities of free citizens in the several states", Congress voted down South Carolina's proposal to insert the word "white" into this clause.”

Thomas G. West (1945) American academic

2000s, Vindicating the Founders (2001)

“In 1896, in Plessy v. Ferguson, the Court decided that 'separate but equal' did not violate the equal protection clause, and the South and not only the South relied upon this decision in building their systems of racially segregated public schools. The Court's 1896 decision can be explained in part by reason of the fact that the country—and the Western World generally—was then nearly submerged by the 'evolutionary' enlightenment. This movement, which dominated the intellectual elites in the universities, the law schools, and the media, denied the story of Creation in the Bible, and rejected the hitherto received idea that "God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." It entertained instead the idea that the races of mankind did not all emerge at the same time from the subhumanity which preceded their humanity. Evolutionary doctrine encouraged the idea that there was a fundamental inequality among the aforesaid races, and this idea virtually relegated to the "dustbin of history" the contrary idea, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address, "that all men are created equal."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Logic of the Colorblind Constitution (2004)

Men , God , World , School

“You can say for me that I will not play with the Red Sox unless I get $20,000. You may think that sounds like a pipe dream, but it is the truth. I feel that I made a bad move last year when I signed a three years' contract to play for $30,000. The Boston club realized much on my value and I think I am entitled to twice as much as my contract calls for. The contract has two years to run, I know. It may be ironbound as far as the Boston club is concerned, but I think with the 10-day clause in it I am entitled to the same privileges as the club. Well, that is a matter for the owners to right, and as my business is in another direction just at present I am going to wait to hear from them.”

Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player

As quoted in "$20,000 Yearly the Figure Ruth Names; Cheering Message to Frazee On His Way to Films" by John J. Hallahan, in The Boston Globe (October 25, 1919), p. 5

Truth , Dreams , Feeling , Business

“The majority's decision today will require States to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages entered in other States largely based on a constitutional provision guaranteeing 'due process' before a person is deprived of his 'life, liberty, or property'. I have elsewhere explained the dangerous fiction of treating the Due Process Clause as a font of substantive rights. It distorts the constitutional text, which guarantees only whatever 'process' is 'due' before a person is deprived of life, liberty, and property. Worse, it invites judges to do exactly what the majority has done here.”

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

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Life , Marriage , Sex , Decision

“The treaty clauses, in fact, wrote the ultimate doom of Christian activity in China. To have believed that a religion which grew up under the protection of foreign powers, especially under humiliating conditions, following defeat, would be tolerated when the nation recovered its authority, showed extreme shortsightedness. The fact is that the missionaries, like other Europeans, felt convinced in the nineteenth century that their political supremacy was permanent, and they never imagined that China would regain a position when the history of the past might be brought up against them and their converts. `The Church', as Latourette has pointed out, `had become a partner in Western imperialism.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

When that imperialism was finally destroyed, the Church could not escape the fate of its patron and ally.
Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Fate , Religion , Imagination , History

“The fate of States decides theirs:
Clauses of treaties determine their affections.”

Pierre Corneille Rodogune

Le destin des Etats est arbitre du leur,
Et l'ordre des traités règle tout dans leur cœur.
Rodogune, act III, scene iv.
Rodogune (1644)

Fate

“In Hollywood, women hate each other. Everyone is so bitchy and they don't want younger actresses coming in and taking their roles. You only have to look at what it's done to Kate Beckinsale. She used be cool. Now I've heard she's got a clause in her contract saying that she can't be filmed bending over at more than a 45-degree angle because her boob implants slide up onto her collar bone.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Sienna talks about Kate Beckinsale Article http://www.yee.ch/movies/K/KA/Kate_Beckinsale/Kate_Beckinsale.htm. yee.ch. 2004

Women , Hate

“As used in the Due Process Clauses, 'liberty' most likely refers to 'the power of loco-motion, of changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment or restraint, unless by due course of law'. That definition is drawn from the historical roots of the Clauses and is consistent with our Constitution’s text and structure. Both of the Constitution’s Due Process Clauses reach back to Magna Carta. Chapter 39 of the original Magna Carta provided ', No free man shall be taken, imprisoned, disseised, outlawed, banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will We proceed against or prosecute him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers and by the law of the land'. Although the 1215 version of Magna Carta was in effect for only a few weeks, this provision was later reissued in 1225 with modest changes to its wording as follows: 'No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.”

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

In his influential commentary on the provision many years later, Sir Edward Coke interpreted the words 'by the law of the land' to mean the same thing as 'by due proces of the common law'.
Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Law , Way , Change , Personality

“If you allow this state of things to go on, what will follow? If these foreign goods come in cheaper, one of two things must follow. Either you will have to give up the conditions you have gained, either you will have to abolish and repeal the fair-wages clause of our Factory Acts, and the compensation to workmen, and either you will have to take lower wages, or you will lose work. You cannot keep your work at this higher standard of living and pay if at the same time you allow foreigners at a lower standard and lower rate of pay to send their goods freely in competition with yours.”

Joseph Chamberlain (1836–1914) British businessman, politician, and statesman

Speech in Greenock (7 October 1903), quoted in The Times (8 October 1903), p. 8.
1900s

Time

“There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Earl Warren (1891–1974) United States federal judge

Loving v. Virginia http://www.amazon.com/Everyone-African-Science-Explodes-Myth/dp/1633880184/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8 (1967).
1960s

Marriage , Freedom , Personality

“With respect to the importation of slaves it was left to Congress. This disturbed the 2 Southernmost states who knew that Congress would immediately suppress the importation of slaves. Those 2 states therefore struck up a bargain with the 3 New England states. If they would join to admit slaves for some years, the 2 Southernmost states would join in changing the clause which required 2/3 of the legislature in any vote. It was done. These articles were changed accordingly, and from that moment the 2 Southern states and the 3 Northern ones joined Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, and made the majority 8 to 3 against us instead of 8 to 3 for us as it had been through the whole Convention. Under this coalition, the great principles of the Constitution were changed in the last days of the Convention.”

George Mason (1725–1792) American delegate from Virginia to the U.S. Constitutional Convention

Source: https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-24-02-0387
Source: Discussion with Jefferson (1792)

Change

“Touching the secrets of the heart and the successions of time, doth make a just and sound difference between the manner of the exposition of the Scriptures and all other books. For it is an excellent observation which hath been made upon the answers of our Saviour Christ to many of the questions which were propounded to Him, how that they are impertinent to the state of the question demanded: the reason whereof is, because not being like man, which knows man’s thoughts by his words, but knowing man’s thoughts immediately, He never answered their words, but their thoughts. Much in the like manner it is with the Scriptures, which being written to the thoughts of men, and to the succession of all ages, with a foresight of all heresies, contradictions, differing estates of the Church, yea, and particularly of the elect, are not to be interpreted only according to the latitude of the proper sense of the place, and respectively towards that present occasion whereupon the words were uttered, or in precise congruity or contexture with the words before or after, or in contemplation of the principal scope of the place; but have in themselves, not only totally or collectively, but distributively in clauses and words, infinite springs and streams of doctrine to water the Church in every part. And therefore as the literal sense is, as it were, the main stream or river, so the moral sense chiefly, and sometimes the allegorical or typical, are they whereof the Church hath most use; not that I wish men to be bold in allegories, or indulgent or light in allusions: but that I do much condemn that interpretation of the Scripture which is only after the manner as men use to interpret a profane book.”

Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning

XXV. (17)
The Advancement of Learning (1605)

Men , Secret , Books , Age

“In enacting the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, the Framers similarly chose to employ the 'life, liberty, or property' formulation, though they otherwise deviated substantially from the States' use of Magna Carta's language in the Clause. When read in light of the history of that formulation, it is hard to see how the 'liberty' protected by the Clause could be interpreted to include anything broader than freedom from physical restraint. That was the consistent usage of the time when 'liberty' was paired with 'life' and 'property'. And that usage avoids rendering superfluous those protections for 'life' and 'property.”

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

If the Fifth Amendment uses 'liberty' in this narrow sense, then the Fourteenth Amendment likely does as well.
Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Life , History , Sense , Freedom

“[The Kellog Pact is] a mighty moral bulwark against war - and we must never underestimate the effectiveness of moral bulwarks with no bayonet nor bludgeon behind them. The entry of the United States into the Permanent Court of International Justice, the growing confidence in the court, and the increase in the number of nations who have signed the Optional Clause mark definite and, I believe, irrevocable steps in the displacement of military power by judicial process in the settlement of international disputes. Public servants like us will fail in our duty if we do not diminish military power in proportion to the increase of political security…I dare affirm that, in the naval programme of the leading naval powers, there is a margin between real security needs and actual or projected strength, and the world expects this Conference to eliminate that margin.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech as chairman of the London Naval Conference (January 1930), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 510
1930s

War , World , Justice , Confidence

“It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty of the press, and of speech, is within the liberty safeguarded by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from invasion by state action. It was found impossible to conclude that this essential personal liberty of the citizen was left unprotected by the general guaranty of fundamental rights of person and property.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Near v. Minnesota, 283 U.S. 697 (1931).
Judicial opinions

Personality

“The clause is an example of one of the most prevalent and damaging fallacies in this whole subject—the fallacy of supposing that the consequences that are apprehended from the massive substitution, in various parts of the country, for the indigenous population of a population from overseas are either due to what is called physical deprivation, poverty, and so on, or can be in any way alleviated, avoided or foreclosed by material provision…It is by no means true that the areas of maximum New Commonwealth immigrant entry—the locations of what Lord Radcliffe many years ago called "the alien wedge"—are characteristically or specifically coincident with the areas of greatest poverty and desuetude in our cities. In some cases the two coincide. Sometimes, naturally, this happens in the central and rundown areas—run down because they are central—that because they are central it is in those areas that major immigrant populations are found…Over and over again this easy illusion has been propounded, and as often experience has disposed of it. It is not because people are poor, to the extent that they are poor, and it is not because they live in the streets of the inner cities, in which the indigenous population of this country has lived—gradually improving, and in some cases rapidly improving over generations—that we apprehend what will be the consequence when one-third of some of the major cities and industrial areas of our country is in New Commonwealth occupation. It is because of human differences. It is because of the clash and contrast between two populations which contend for the same territory.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1976/jul/08/report-on-resources in the House of Commons (8 July 1976)
1970s

People , Way , Nature , Parting

“The Bill of Rights is a born rebel. It reeks with sedition. In every clause it shakes its fist in the face of constituted authority… it is the one guarantee of human freedom to the American people.”

Frank I. Cobb (1869–1923) American newspaper editor

LaFollette's Magazine (January 1920).

People , Freedom

“A parallel case was the Fugitive Slave Act. Article IV of the Constitution says that any person held to the service or laborer in any state escaping to another state shall not be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be returned to the one to whom the service or labor is due. This is the Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Personality

“It was for all the members of the Cabinet a relief. Never before had a declaration of war been welcomed with such satisfaction. France having done all that was incumbent upon her to maintain peace and war having nevertheless become inevitable, it was a hundred times better that we should not have been led, even by repeated violation of our frontiers, to declare it ourselves. It was indispensable that Germany, who was entirely responsible for the aggression, should be led into publicly confessing her intentions. If we had had to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have been contested, national unanimity would have been smashed, it would probably have meant Italy would have been forced by the clauses of the Triple Alliance to side against us.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Diary entry (3 August 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 140.

War , Peace , Time

“A moral coward, you see, is simply someone who has read the fine print on the back of his Birth Certificate and seen the little clause which says "You can't win."”

Kyril Bonfiglioli (1928–1985) British art dealer

Source: The Mortdecai Trilogy, Something Nasty in the Woodshed (1976), Ch. 16.

Birth , Reading

“It were doubtless to be wished, that the power of prohibiting the importation of slaves had not been postponed until the year 1808, or rather that it had been suffered to have immediate operation. But it is not difficult to account, either for this restriction on the general government, or for the manner in which the whole clause is expressed. It ought to be considered as a great point gained in favor of humanity, that a period of twenty years may terminate forever, within these States, a traffic which has so long and so loudly upbraided the barbarism of modern policy; that within that period, it will receive a considerable discouragement from the federal government, and may be totally abolished, by a concurrence of the few States which continue the unnatural traffic, in the prohibitory example which has been given by so great a majority of the Union. Happy would it be for the unfortunate Africans, if an equal prospect lay before them of being redeemed from the oppressions of their European brethren!”

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

Federalist No. 42 http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/wew/quotes/slavery.html
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Suffering , Happiness

“.. personal credit was guaranteed in the most summary and extravagant fashion; for the law entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent debtor like a thief, and granted to him in sober earnest by legislative enactment what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy, guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to cutting off too much more carefully than did the Jew.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1, Pt. 1, Translated by W.P.Dickson
Character of Roman law in relation to Debt in the Roman Kingdom.
The History of Rome - Volume 1

Law , Fashion , Personality

“Shortly after the British government had protested Hitler's violation of the military clauses of the Versailles Treaty on March 16 and then joined Italy and France in proclaiming their determination to uphold the sanctity of treaties, it had, behind the backs of its two Stresa allies, negotiated a naval agreement which violated the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty and gave Hitler the right and encouragement to build all the warships his shipyards could construct for at least ten years.* The Naval Pact was signed in London on June 18, 1935, without the British government having the courtesy to consult with France and Italy, or later, to inform them of the secret agreements which stipulated that the Germans could build in certain categories more powerful warships than any the three Western nations then possessed. The French regarded this as treachery, which it was. They saw it as a further appeasement of Hitler, whose appetite grew on concessions. And they resented the British agreeing, for what they thought a private gain, to scrap further the peace treaty and thus add to the growing overall military power of Nazi Germany.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Secret , Peace

“The First Amendment expresses our Nation’s fundamental commitment to religious liberty by means of two provisions–one protecting the free exercise of religion, the other barring establishment of religion. They were written by the descendents of people who had come to this land precisely so that they could practice their religion freely. Together with the other First Amendment guarantees–of free speech, a free press, and the rights to assemble and petition–the Religion Clauses were designed to safeguard the freedom of conscience and belief that those immigrants had sought. They embody an idea that was once considered radical: Free people are entitled to free and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct.”

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, 545 U.S. 844 (2005) (concurring).

People , Religion , Exercises , Idea

“Even if the doctrine of substantive due process were somehow defensible, it is not, petitioners still would not have a claim. To invoke the protection of the Due Process Clause at all, whether under a theory of 'substantive' or 'procedural' due process, a party must first identify a deprivation of 'life, liberty, or property'. The majority claims these state laws deprive petitioners of 'liberty', but the concept of 'liberty' it conjures up bears no resemblance to any plausible meaning of that word as it is used in the Due Process Clauses.”

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

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015).
2010s

Life , Law

“With this recitation of paraphernalia and detritus, O'Brien manages to encapsulate the experience of an army and of a particular war, of a mined and booby-trapped landscape, of cold nights and hot days, of soaking monsoons and rice paddies, and of the possibility of being shot, like Ted Lavender, suddenly and out of nowhere: not only in the middle of a sentence but in the midst of a subordinate clause.”

Francine Prose book Reading Like a Writer

Reading Like a Writer, ch. 3, p. 57 (2006) (referring to a passage in The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien)

War , Night

“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment stands, in my opinion, on its own bottom.”

John Marshall Harlan II (1899–1971) American judge and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (1899-1971)

Concurring in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).

“Tony Blair: Has the Prime Minister secured even the minimal guarantee from the Euro-rebels that, on a future vote of confidence on Europe, they will support him?
John Major: I can sense the concern in the right hon. Gentleman's voice. Perhaps he would like to tell me whether he has received the support of the 50 MPs who defied his Front Bench over Maastricht; of the 40 who defied him over European finance; on a single currency, where the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was in dispute with the deputy leader of the Labour party; and on clause IV, which half his, I think he called them, infantile MEPs want to keep. He does not, and his deputy leader does one day and does not the next. These are party matters. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us what his position is?
Tony Blair: There is one very big difference—I lead my party, he follows his.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Hansard http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199495/cmhansrd/1995-04-25/Orals-2.html, House of Commons 6th series, vol. 258, cols. 655-6.
Prime Minister's Question Time, 25 April 1995.
1990s

Confidence , Support , Thinking , Sense

“To prevent his inventions getting abroad to foreigners, Mr. Arkwright purposely omitted to give so full and particular a description of his inventions, in the specification of his last patent, as he would otherwise have done, believing, from the concluding clause in the patent, that he need not so fully describe. His patent right being largely infringed, he was obliged to prosecute some infringers, although an association was formed to resist him; but on a trial in the King's Bench in July 1781 a verdict was given against him, on the ground that his specification was not as full and accurate as the law requires. Having established a business that already employs above 5,000 persons, and a capital of not less than 200,000 l.”

Richard Arkwright (1732–1792) textile entrepreneur; developer of the cotton mill

he hopes to be relieved by Parliament, from the consequences of an unintentional error.
The case, 1782

Law , Hope , Error , Business

“Douglas accepted Dred Scott, and in Dred Scott, the Chief Justice had said that the right to own slaves is expressly affirmed in the Constitution. And Lincoln said in the debates that it was implied but not expressly affirmed. The argument against any restriction on slavery was that any right expressly affirmed in the Constitution takes precedent over any law or regulation in any jurisdiction whatever. (Remember, the supremacy clause in Article VI of the Constitution says that this Constitution, and the laws and treaties made in pursuance thereof, are the supreme law of land—anything in any law or a constitution of any state to the contrary not withstanding.)”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Justice , Law

“And, further, shall we be sure of finding the left bank free from German troops? Germany is supposedly going to undertake to have neither troops nor fortresses on the left bank and within a zone extending 50 km. east of the Rhine. But the Treaty does not provide for any permanent supervision of troops and armaments, on the left bank any more than elsewhere in Germany. In the absence of this permanent supervision, the clause stipulating that the League of Nations may order enquiries to be undertaken is in danger of being purely illusory. We can thus have no guarantee that after the expiry of the fifteen years and the evacuation of the left bank, the Germans will not filter troops by degrees into this district. Even supposing they have not previously done so, how can we prevent them doing it at the moment when we intend to re-occupy on account of their default? It will be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us. The option to renew the occupation should not therefore from any point of view be substituted for occupation. It will then be simple for them to leap to the Rhine in a night and to seize this natural military frontier well ahead of us.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

Memorandum to Clemenceau (28 April 1919), quoted in David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 430.

Nature , Night

“After nearly a quarter of a century of prosperity under the Constitution, the spirit of slavery so far triumphed over the early principles and practices of the government that, in 1812, South Carolina and her followers in Congress succeeded in inserting the word 'white' in the suffrage clause of the act establishing a territorial government for Missouri. One by one the Slave States, and many of the free States, gave way before the crusade of slavery against negro citizenship. In 1817, Connecticut caught the infection, and in her constitution she excluded the negro from the ballot-box. In every other New England State his ancient right of suffrage has remained and still remains undisturbed. Free negroes voted in Maryland till 1833; in North Carolina, till 1835; in ennsylvania, till 1838. It was the boast of Cave Johnson of Tennessee that he owed his election to Congress in 1828 to the free negroes who worked in his mills. They were denied the suffrage in 1834, under the new constitution of Tennessee, by a vote of thirty-three to twenty-three. As new States were formed, their constitutions for the most part excluded the negro from citizenship. Then followed the shameful catalogue of black laws; expatriation and ostracism in every form, which have so deeply disgraced the record of legislation in many of the States.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

Law , Way , Parting , Box

“In fifteen years I will be dead, but if you do me the honour of visiting my tomb, you will be able to say that the Germans have not fulfilled all the clauses of the treaty, and that we are still on the Rhine.”

Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929) French politician

Remarks to Poincaré in Cabinet (25 April 1919), quoted in David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 352.
Prime Minister

Dead

“Certain Laodiceans, and lukewarm persons, think they may accommodate points of religion, by middle way, and taking part of both, and witty reconcilements; as if they would make an arbitrament between God and man. Both these extremes are to be avoided; which will be done, if the league of Christians, penned by our Savior himself, were in two cross clauses thereof, soundly and plainly expounded: He that is not with us, is against us; and again, He that is not against us, is with us; that is, if the points fundamental and of substance in religion, were truly discerned and distinguished, from points not merely of faith, but of opinion, order, or good intention.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Essays (1625)

God , Faith , Religion , Way

“Germany agreed to restrict her Navy to one third the size of the British but was accorded the right to build submarines, explicitly denied her by the peace treaty, up to 60 percent of British strength, and to 100 percent in case she decided it was necessary to her security, which she shortly did. Germany also pledged that her U-boats would never attack unarmed merchant ships, a word that she went back on from the very beginning of the second war. As soon as the deal with Britain was concluded Germany laid down two battleships, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, with a displacement of over 45,000 tons. By the terms of the Washington and London naval accords, Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the United States had to limit their battleships to 35,000 tons. Great Britain, as the French contended, had no legal right to absolve Germany from respecting the naval clauses of the Versailles Treaty. And, as many Frenchmen added, no moral right either.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

Book Three, Chapter 15, Aftermath: Widening of the Gulf: 1934-1936, discussing the Anglo-German Naval Agreement.
The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War , Peace

“I'm only introducing it because of a small sub-clause in an Official Charge that escaped my notice a year or two back. Unfortunately the author didn't forget. Like elephants, authors are – nothing contractual escapes them.”

Jonathan Stroud (1970) British writer of fantasy fiction

The Bartimaeus Trilogy Official Website, Home Page

Forgetting

“The Court is at liberty to transpose and mould clauses and words in a will so as to make the whole take effect.”

Sir Francis Buller, 1st Baronet (1746–1800) British judge

Doe v. Wilkinson (1788), 2 T. R. 223.

“Already in this country, as a result of the recent controversy, it is written in the constitution of the socialist party that "any member of the party who opposes political action or advocates crime, sabotage, or other methods of violence as a weapon of the working class to aid in its emancipation shall be expelled from membership in the party." Adopted by the national convention of the party in 1911, this clause was ratified at a general referendum of all the membership of the party. It is clear, therefore, that the immense majority of socialists are determined to employ peaceable and legal methods of action.”

Robert Hunter (author) (1874–1942) American sociologist, author, golf course architect

Source: Violence and the Labor Movement (1914), p. ix

Country

“I think the Canadian people have a right to know: Why, when your primary objective was to get unfettered and secure access into the American Market we didn't get it. Why you didn't put clauses in to protect our social programs in this negotiation we'll have on the definition of subsidies where the heavy weight of the American Republic will be put in against us. Why did that not happen? Why also, did we get a situation where we surrendered our Energy policy to the United States, something which they'd been trying to achieve since 1956? Why did we abandon our farmers? Why did we open our Capital Markets so that a Canadian Bank can be bought up and we don't have reciprocal rights into the American Market at all? And why did you remove any ability to control the Canadian ownership of our businesses? These are questions that Canadians deserve to have an answer to, and we have not had an opportunity in six hours to deal with them in a way that would make you come out of your shell!”

John Turner (1929) 17th Prime Minister of Canada

People , Way , Question , Business

“The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message”

Michael Halliday (1925–2018) Australian linguist

Source: 1970s and later, Cohesion in English (English Language), 1976, p. 212.
Context: The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic.

Departure

“All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good : they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,
DO WHAT THOU WILT.
Because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition, by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude, wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to desire what is denied us.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Ch. 57 : How the Thelemites were governed, and of their manner of living; the famous dictum of the abbey of Theleme presented here, "Do what thou wilt" (Fais ce que voudras), evokes an ancient expression by St. Augustine of Hippo: "Love, and do what thou wilt." The expression of Rabelais was later used by the Hellfire Club established by Sir Francis Dashwood, and by Aleister Crowley in his The Book of the Law (1904): "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law."
Chapter 58 : A prophetical Riddle.

Life , Men , Pleasure , Law

“In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed,”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 58 : A prophetical Riddle.
Context: All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good : they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it, and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule, and strictest tie of their order, there was but this one clause to be observed

“The civil rights establishment, led by the NAACP, fought the good fight that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. They fought that fight under the banner of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which reflected the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The classic statement of this principle is to be found in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson,”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

1990s, The Party of Lincoln vs. The Party of Bureaucrats (1996)
Context: The civil rights establishment, led by the NAACP, fought the good fight that led to the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965. They fought that fight under the banner of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which reflected the equality proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. The classic statement of this principle is to be found in Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissenting opinion in Plessy v. Ferguson, the infamous 1896 decision that enshrined "separate but equal" into constitutional law for more than half a century, "In view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior dominant ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved".

Education , Justice , Decision , Fight

“But the Fugitive Slave Clause is in the Constitution, and Lincoln thought that any refusal to implement the right clearly defined in the Constitution would justify secession. You can't pick and choose which parts of the Constitution you like. Once you do that, then the Constitution is simply, as Jefferson said once, "a blank sheet of paper."”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Q&A
Context: DiLorenzo thinks that it is a reflection on Lincoln's anti-slavery character that he supported the Fugitive Slave Act. But the Fugitive Slave Clause is in the Constitution, and Lincoln thought that any refusal to implement the right clearly defined in the Constitution would justify secession. You can't pick and choose which parts of the Constitution you like. Once you do that, then the Constitution is simply, as Jefferson said once, "a blank sheet of paper." Jefferson said that when he was contemplating purchasing Louisiana. And having said that by purchasing it he would make the Constitution a blank sheet of paper, he went ahead and purchased Louisiana.

Parting

“God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.”

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

1960s, Why Jesus Called A Man A Fool (1967)
Context: This man was a fool because he failed to realize his dependence on God... this man-centered foolishness is still alive today. In fact, it has gotten to the point today that some are even saying that God is dead. The thing that bothers me about it is that they didn't give me full information, because at least I would have wanted to attend God's funeral. And today I want to ask, who was the coroner that pronounced Him dead? I want to raise a question, how long had He been sick? I want to know whether He had a heart attack or died of chronic cancer. These questions haven't been answered for me, and I'm going on believing and knowing that God is alive. You see, as long as love is around, God is alive. As long as justice is around, God is alive. There are certain conceptions of God that needed to die, but not God. You see, God is the supreme noun of life; He's not an adjective. He is the supreme subject of life; He's not a verb. He's the supreme independent clause; He's not a dependent clause. Everything else is dependent on Him, but He is dependent on nothing.

Life , God , Dependency

“AOC to: @tedcruz if you’re serious about a clean bill, then I’m down. Let’s make a deal. If we can agree on a bill with no partisan snuck-in clauses, no poison pills, etc - just a straight, clean ban on members of Congress becoming paid lobbyists - then I’ll co-lead the bill with you.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Post https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1134199323263209480Twitter, (30 May 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), May 2019

Making love

“Had those who drew and ratified the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth Amendment or the Fourteenth Amendment known the components of liberty in its manifold possibilities, they might have been more specific. They did not presume to have this insight. They knew times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.”

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

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=02-102 (26 June 2003).

Time , Law , Freedom , Search

“The problem to which the eminent domain clause is directed is that of political obligation and organization. What are the reasons for the formation of the state? What can the state demand of the individuals citizens whom it both governs and represents?”

Richard Epstein (1943) American legal scholar

[Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain, https://books.google.com/books?id=uz7nJkFvVn0C, 1985, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-86729-1] (quote from p. 3)

Problem

“I find it a sufficient embarrassment that our Establishment Clause jurisprudence regarding holiday displays has come to 'require[e] scrutiny more commonly associated with interior decorators than with the judiciary.'”

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

But interior decorating is a rock hard science compared to psychology practiced by amateurs.

Lee v. Weisman (1992, dissenting); decided June 24, 1992.
1990s

Holiday

“Nothing is proved by the expectation of some Northerners that the clause would eventually put an end to slavery, for there was widespread confusion of "slavery" with the "slave trade."”

David Brion Davis (1927–2019) American historian

Both American and British abolitionists assumed that an end to slave imports would lead automatically to the amelioration and gradual abolition of slavery.
The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution, 1770-1823, page 129. https://books.google.com/books?id=9lsvDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA129

“[T]he "dormant Commerce Clause" [is] a set of unwritten constitutional principles limiting state commercial regulation in the face of congressional silence coupled with the Constitution’s delegation to Congress of the power to regulate interstate commerce.”

Laurence Tribe (1941) American lawyer and law school professor

Source: Soundings and Silences (2016)

Silence