Amendments Quotes

The protection guaranteed by the Amendments is much broader in scope. The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone - the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the Government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts ascertained by such intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.

[Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (dissenting)] ~ Louis D. Brandeis

The fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no private property shall be taken for a public use without the payment of just compensation. ~ Elton Gallegly

I understand the Second Amendment. I respect the Second Amendment. I think we need to use common sense tools to keep the American people safe, to keep our streets safe. ~ Eric Holder

Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights. ~ Thurgood Marshall

I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings. ~ L. Neil Smith

The First Amendment defends all forms of speech including hate speech, which is why groups like Ku Klux Klan are allowed to utter their poisonous remarks. ~ Salman Rushdie

The health of the second amendment is the primary indicator of the overall health of the nation. ~ John Longenecker

We've got some people who think Shariah law oughta be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there, the Second Amendment is there, to make sure all of the rest of the amendments are followed. ~ Louie Gohmert

I must say this concerning the great controversy over rifles and shotguns. The only thing 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. ~ Malcolm X

So the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is out there preserving and fighting for, and sometimes winning and sometimes losing, the fight for First Amendment rights in comics and, more generally, for freedom of speech. ~ Neil Gaiman

There are amendments never offered, there are bills never heard, that are basically killed because of the process. ~ Dan Webster

The men who wrote the First Amendment religion clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment ... the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week the members of the first Congress voted to appoint and pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the First Amendment ... (that) they intended to forbid what they had just declared acceptable. ~ Warren E. Burger

It's either the Amendment or this Confederate peace. You cannot have both. ~ David Strathairn

I strongly believe that the Second Amendment creates an individual right to possess and use guns for purposes of both hunting and self-defense. ~ Cass Sunstein

I'm really proud of this Supreme Court and the way they've been dealing with the issue of First Amendment political speech. ~ Mitch McConnell

I believe the equal rights amendment is a necessity of life for all citizens. The cabinet sometimes felt that I shouldn't be so outspoken. ~ Betty Ford

The next year, the Court decided what is generally viewed as the major case of the early years. The decision, Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), provoked an immediate backlash, in the form of the first constitutional amendment to be ratified after the ten amendments of the Bill of Rights. ~ Linda Greenhouse

[Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors? ... Why shouldn't executions be public? ~ Phil Donahue

If U.S. national sovereignty continues, it is only as a state that Puerto Rico will have permanent 10th Amendment powers over its non-federal affairs, as well as voting power in Congress. ~ Dick Thornburgh

In D.C., I've passed amendments to allocate $6.3 million to keep our waterways open for business, $1 million as a down payment on our wetland restoration - our natural storm protection - and $5 million to ensure that drilling permits are reviewed thoroughly and efficiently. ~ Cedric Richmond

Instead of giving money to found colleges to promote learning, why don't they pass a constitutional amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as the Prohibition one did, why, in five years we would have the smartest race of people on earth. ~ Will Rogers

My own idea, for what it is worth, is that all sadness which is not either arising from the repentance of a concrete sin and hastening towards concrete amendment or restitution, or else arising from pity and hastening to active assistance, is simply bad; and I think we all sin by needlessly disobeying the apostolic injunction to 'rejoice' as much as by anything else.
Humility, after the first shock, is a cheerful virtue. ~ C.S. Lewis

The first step towards amendment is the recognition of error. ~ Seneca The Younger

From gun shows, where they openly promote their product by imploring customers to buy "while you still can," to homegrown militias who apparently believe in their blessed little hearts that they, a group of overweight forty-and fifty-year-old men who have never even had Boy Scout–level training and can't jog a mile, are the protectors of America, the Second Amendment has by far got to be the most countercultured of all the amendments. Obviously, there are groups that take the First Amendment very seriously, but it's tough to imagine a group of soccer moms getting together on the weekends to discuss "tactics" on how to keep free speech alive and comparing notes on their sweet new semiautomatic megaphones they use to proudly shout about their rights at "free speech shows. ~ Trae Crowder

The 1st Amendment protects the right to speak, not the right to spend. ~ Byron White

The 21st Amendment gives the states the right to decide what the drinking ages should be and other aspects relative to alcoholic beverages, and I support that. As a United States senator, I want to weigh in - this is not my agenda. ~ Pete Coors

Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Some saw the move as an attempt to preserve traditional values, while others saw it as a cynical ploy to ensure that Vice President ... Cheney will never have to pay for his gay daughter's wedding. ~ Jon Stewart

I'm always a little cautious, there's a few amendments that are out there that I think could do some damage, so I've been more concerned about over regulating, going too far. ~ Don Nickles

I'm not scared of diversity. We have to have debates and win the argument, and if there are amendments that need to be brought up so we find out where the party is, so be it. ~ Jason Chaffetz

If we set the precedent of limiting the First Amendment, in order to protect the sensibilities of those who are offended by flag burning, what will we say the next time someone is offended by some other minority view, or by some other person's exercise of the freedom the Constitution is supposed to protect? ~ Edward Kennedy

There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries special relevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South's weapon of choice in its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade that effectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade, courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia used the filibuster to choke off any and every piece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fair employment bills, or anti-lynching bills. ~ Barack Obama

The Fourth Amendment was what we fought the revolution over! ~ Rand Paul

The Washington Times wrote a story questioning the authenticity of some of the suggestions made about me in Silent Coup. But as a believer in the First Amendment, I believe they have more than a right to air their views. ~ Bob Woodward

Commanding goodness and forbiding to do evil (are) for the amendment and correction of society and the common folks. ~ Fatima Bint Muhammad

Do the people of this land ... desire to preserve those [liberties] protected by the First Amendment ... If so, let them withstand all beginnings of encroachment. For the saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanquished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch for a saving hand while yet there was time. ~ George Sutherland

Whether the criticism of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments expressed by the leaders of the women's rights movement was justifiable or not is still being debated. But one thing seems clear: their defense of their own interests as white middle-class women - in a frequently egotistical and elitist fashion - exposed the tenuous and superficial nature of their relationship to the postwar campaign for Black equality. Granted, the two Amendments excluded women from the new process of enfranchisement and were thus interpreted by them as detrimental to their political aims. Granted, they felt they had as powerful a case for suffrage as Black men. Yet in articulating their opposition with arguments invoking the privileges of white supremacy, they revealed how defenseless they remained - even after years of involvement in progressive causes - to the pernicious ideological influence of racism. ~ Angela Y. Davis

I support and have always supported passage of a federal constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My personal belief is that marriage is between one man and one woman, for life. ~ Mike Huckabee

I want to regain my First Amendment rights. ~ Laura Schlessinger

The First Amendment is important not only to guarantee the rights of alternative religions and of nonreligious persons in society; it is also important in setting the only possible legal and social condition for the creative health of serious religion itself. ~ Langdon Brown Gilkey

Several amendments should be made to the primary and general election laws to improve them, but such changes must in no way interfere with a full and free expression of the people's choice in naming the candidates to be voted on at general elections. ~ Arthur Capper

Whether children have first amendment rights is a vexed legal question, but what is not in question is that they someday will. Constraining them from expressing their views is no preparation for exercising those rights. ~ Crispin Sartwell

He [Louis Brandeis] would have not had any patience with that great debate which you're right to kind of signal between Justice Scalia and Justice Alito about do you need a physical trespass into the home or onto the carriage in order to trigger the values of the Fourth Amendment. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

The Second Amendment of our Bill of Rights is my Concealed Weapons Permit, period. ~ Ted Nugent

Privacy is not explicitly spelled out in the Constitution as freedom of speech is in the First Amendment. ~ Larry Flynt

It is especially imperative for Congress to exercise careful judgment in this area, because of the difficulty under existing laws, in obtaining judicial review of Postal Service abuses ... We strongly oppose the legislation's infringement of rights guaranteed under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution. ~ John Shattuck

The 22nd Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime. ~ William J. Clinton

The Second Amendment's language and historical and philosophical background demonstrated that it was designed to guarantee individuals the possession of certain kinds of arms for three purposes: (1) crime prevention or what we would today describe as self-defense; (2) national defense; and (3) preservation of individual liberty ... ~ Don Kates

We are wide open and vulnerable and in all likelihood an activist judge will strike down our Defense of Marriage Act, our state law against gay marriage, this year. And in all likelihood, we will have gay marriage in 2004 in Minnesota , if we don't get this amendment on the ballot for November. ~ Michele Bachmann

Violating the 4th Amendment guarantees against illegal searches and seizures is not the way to solve crime problems. ~ Tim Wise

Having been a lobbyist myself you can't overstate how easy it is to get things done your way. It's a complicated policy and many lobbyists are trying to wreck amendments as we speak. ~ Bryony Worthington, Baroness Worthington

I'm tired of being considered some kind of criminal or dangerous throwback for no other reason than that I value, exercise, and defend my rights under the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution. ~ L. Neil Smith

[T]he present Constitution is the standard to which we are to cling. Under its banners, bona fide must we combat our political foes - rejecting all changes but through the channel itself provides for amendments. ~ Alexander Hamilton

We didn't pass any constitutional amendments that affected the executive branch while I was governor. ~ John Engler

That's in the First Amendment? ~ Christine O'Donnell

I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment. But I think I have a First Amendment right not to be shot. ~ Michael Nutter

Our Founding Fathers were the first to articulate the reasons for their First Amendment, the same reasons given by Learned Hand, and by Justice Brennan in New York Times v. Sullivan . It is a lesson we keep forgetting and must relearn in each succeeding generation. ~ Gilbert S. Merritt, Jr.

With the strong bipartisan rejection of the Dorgan amendment today, the Senate cast a vote in favor of the U.S. working to knock down unfair trade barriers that hurt American business and farmers ~ Rob Portman

While 45 of the 50 States have either a State constitutional amendment or a statute that preserves the current definition of marriage, left-wing activist judges and officials at the local levels have struck down State laws protecting marriage. ~ John Boehner

It's as if we think the laws of physics are subject to debate and amendment and political contributions can sway the laws of physics. ~ Al Gore

We need a broad-based coalition that is way beyond the bounds of Christianity to be able to help people to understand that there is a groundswell of support for the marriage amendment and for opposition to same-sex marriages. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me: ... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Even in the United States, after all, what brought equal rights to blacks wasn't the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments passed after the Civil War, but rather the grassroots civil rights movement nearly one hundred years later. Laws matter, but typically changing the law by itself accomplishes little. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

It's part of the Constitution. People have the right to bear arms. Then the restrictions of it have to be reasonable and sensible. You can't just remove that right. You've got to regulate, consistent with the Second Amendment. ~ Rudy Giuliani

As to the media, they are protected by the First Amendment, as they should be. ~ L. Neil Smith

The Wright Amendment is a pain in the ass, but not every pain in the ass is a constitutional infringement. ~ Herb Kelleher

Our 1 million members across the country will be watching closely to see if the video game industry hides behind a First Amendment veil in order to exploit children for the sake of corporate profit. ~ Connie Sellecca

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that. ~ Neil Gaiman

The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting, or with protecting the expressive activity of topless dancers, which of late has found some shelter under the First Amendment. Rather, the Framers cherished unabridged freedom of political communication. ~ George Will

I am for the First Amendment from the first word to the last. I believe it means what it says. ~ Hugo Black

The First Amendment to the Constitution reflects that concept recognized in the Ten Commandments, that the duties we owe to God and the manner of discharging those duties are outside the purview of government. ~ Roy Moore

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech. ~ Anthony Kennedy

I do support a constitutional amendment on marriage between a man and a woman, but I would not be going into the states to overturn their state law. ~ Michele Bachmann

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse. ~ Benjamin Franklin

There's as much chance of repealing the Eighteenth Amendment as there is for a hummingbird to fly to the planet Mars with the Washington Monument tied to its tail. ~ Morris Sheppard

That wall, embodied in the First Amendment, is perhaps America's most important contribution to political progress on this planet. ~ Lowell P. Weicker, Jr.

Thus these three amendments to the Constitution [13th, 14th, 15th] were ratified while the ten Southern states were under martial law, and "had no law at all." The Force Acts, the four Reconstruction Acts, and the Civil Rights Act were all passed by Congress while the Southern states were not allowed to hold free elections, and all voters were under close supervision by federal troops. Even Soviet Russia has never staged such mockeries of the election procedures. ~ Eustace Mullins

You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment? ~ Christine O'Donnell

Desperate times require desperate measures. What Lincoln and the Lobbyist for the Amendment and the Manager of the Amendment and himself, what they did to get this passed was not illegal. It was murky, but what they did was noble and grand. How they went about it was somewhat murky, but nothing they did was really illegal. ~ Steven Spielberg

[B]y requiring that an execution be relatively painless, we necessarily protect the inmate from enduring any punishment that is comparable to the suffering inflicted on his victim. This trend, while appropriate and required by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, actually undermines the very premise on which public approval of the retribution rationale is based. ~ John Paul Stevens

Struggling to end the war and to eliminate slavery once and for all by way of the 13th Amendment, with the amendment's prospective passage undermining the effort to make peace with the Confederacy and vice versa, Lincoln embodied the Great Man theory that leftists disdain. ~ Steve Erickson

Frederick Douglass called Republicans the 'Party of freedom and progress,' and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law. The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill. ~ Elbert Guillory

The Second Amendment is not really a right. ~ Rosie O'Donnell

Any time someone carries a picket sign in front of the White House, that is the First Amendment in action. ~ Julian Bond

When three liberals get together they form a new party; that is their idea of individualism. They never join a bowling club without introducing as part of the 'agenda' an 'amendment of the statutes. ~ Oswald Spengler

The First Amendment isn't about free thought and free opinion and free belief. The First Amendment is about free exercise
the carrying into practice of religious principles, and beliefs, and convictions. ~ Alan Keyes

. . . the Sixth Amendment is sacrosanct and guarantees everyone the right to a fair trial. You're either for the Constitution or against it. You can't pick and choose your favorite amendments. Why, Ted, is the Second more important than the Sixth? ~ Mark M. Bello

The Grameen Bank Ordinance with amendments up to 2008 is a beautiful legal structure for the fulfillment of the ideals and objectives of the bank. Any change in this structure will be devastating for the bank. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Thanks to Edward Snowden and others, the great threat from the NSA surveillance is now more clearly understood. Current attacks on our liberties very greatly infringe the freedoms meant to be protected by the First and Fourth Amendments. If a whistle-blower reveals the truth about wrongful government actions, calls arise to charge him with treason for hating America. Allies become enemies when it becomes known that we spy on them as well, as it has now been revealed. ~ Ron Paul

The Seventeenth Amendment serves not the public's interest but the interests of the governing masterminds and their disciples. Its early proponents advanced it not because they championed 'democracy' or the individual, but because they knew it would be one of several important mechanisms for empowering the federal government and unraveling constitutional republicanism. ~ Mark R. Levin

But it's hard to talk about art. Maybe there should be a law against it, some First Amendment gag order like crying fire in a crowded theater. ~ Stanley Elkin

(W)e do not count heads before enforcing the First Amendment. ~ Sandra Day O'Connor

The First Amendment says nothing about your getting paid for saying anything. It just says you can say it. I don't believe that if a corporation pulls all the money out of you or a network pulls their money away or you get fired, you're being censored. ~ Penn Jillette

I know that some believe that voluntary prayer in schools should be restricted to a moment of silence. We already have the right to remain silent - we can take our Fifth Amendment. ~ Ronald Reagan

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

Let me say this, to all of the chattering class that so much focuses on those little tiny, yes, porky amendments - the American people really don't care. ~ Chuck Schumer

I'm 100 percent behind the Second Amendment. I believe it's not just a hunting right. It's a right for everyone to carry their weapons. ~ Raul Labrador

In this country [the USA], you have got to tolerate things you do not like in order to preserve the First Amendment, in order to preserve democracy, and if people start bullying people into fearing that if I say something I could offend people, that is exactly why we have a constitution. ~ Harvey Levin

The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn't say keep religion out of government. ~ Rand Paul

In my political career, I'd like to see a constitutional balanced budget amendment. ~ Ken Buck

The First Amendment is crucial. Of course it is. So are all the others. And the Second Amendment is the one that guarantees that people can bear arms to protect themselves. ~ Charlton Heston