Harold Hitz Burton Quotes

The right to control their own government according to constitutional forms is not one of the rights that the citizens of this country are called upon to surrender in time of war.

In a Constitution for a free people, there can be no doubt that the meaning of ‘liberty’ must be broad indeed.

Of course in a democracy the government and the citizens have to abide by court rulings, even if we don't like them or don't agree with them.

I wish the press were paying more attention to the erosion of the Constitution and the slippery slope that we're getting into, by giving up the right of the Congress to talk about when and how and where we go to war.

The First Amendment freedom of religion is as important today as when the Bill of Rights was first written.

History has shown us that, on extraordinarily rare occasions, it becomes necessary for the federal government to intervene on behalf of individuals whose 14th Amendment rights to legal due process and equal protection may be violated by a state.

The Constitution is never tested during times of tranquility; it is during times of tension, turmoil, tragedy, trauma, and terrorism that it is sorely tested.

Our country is wounded and bleeding now if we don't know whether or not habeas corpus exists.

I thought what the military was doing was unconstitutional.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

We have to worry about protecting the Constitution.

Liberty regulated by law is the underlying principle of our institutions.

I disapproved from the first moment... the want of a bill of rights to guard liberty against the legislative as well as the executive branches of the government …

The State governments are as liable to attack these invaluable privileges as the General Government is, and therefore ought to be as cautiously guarded against

Are all the laws to go unexecuted and the government itself go to pieces, lest civil liberties be violated?

The purpose of a written constitution is to bind up the several branches of government by certain laws, which, when they transgress, their acts shall become nullities; to render unnecessary an appeal to the people, or in other words a rebellion, on every infraction of their rights, on the peril that their acquiescence shall be construed into an intention to surrender those rights.

We have long since made clear that a state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens.

Checks and balances, in time of war, are more important than ever.

Under our Constitution the Congress alone has the power to declare war.

A radical ... and revolutionary ... attack upon the fundamental basic principle of representative democracy for free people.

You’ve got to have safeguards [on law enforcement authorities] if we’re going to continue to have the freedom we’ve had for the past 200 years.

The constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime President.

Unless the courts have the power to review the legislative and executive decisions of the nation, we do not have the rule of law… If we don’t follow our own rules, our own Constitution, then, my God, what are we fighting for?

There exists in modem America the necessity for protecting all of us from arbitrary action by governments more powerful and more pervasive than any in our ancestors’ time.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.