Oswald Spengler Quotes

For it is always to be remembered that it is the spirit with which a constitution is in practice administered, that is the great point of consequence, far more than the letter of the law

If the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the Nation ... be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable government, more than for a faithful exercise of its powers

We cannot understand the constitution of any country whatsoever by reading the text alone. To gain a thorough understanding of such constitution we have to know how the text came into existence, the conditions that prevailed at the time. In this way we can grasp the fundamental ideas and the basic reasoning underlying the constitution.

The peculiar circumstances of the moment may render a measure more or less wise, but cannot render it more or less constitutional.

We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adopted to the various crises of human affairs.

I think it makes no difference whether or not I endorse it. The Constitution is as the Supreme Court interprets it and I must conform to this and do my best to see that it is carried out in this country.

In 'The Heritage Guide to the Constitution,' you find a most remarkable collection of scholarly work. Over a hundred people have contributed to explaining what the Constitution says, what it means, how it has been interpreted over the years, and how it is important to people today.

We have to have a good look at the Constitution. Let's determine where the shortcomings are. Then we can start talking of clauses.

If you take a position under the Constitution that is against the majority view, you have to explain it well enough that maybe you can persuade some of that majority to agree with you.

I believe in an evolving Constitution. A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be.

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

I do not have, nor do I believe I have seen, a vision capacious and convincing enough to propound as an organizing principle for the next phase in the law of our Constitution.

It is time... to end the long-standing and unproductive methodological debate over 'originalism' versus 'dynamism' or 'evolution' and focus instead on how, as a substantive matter, we should interpret the Constitution in the twenty-first century, and what it has to say on questions unimaginable to our eighteenth-century Framers.

The framers of our Constitution foresaw this state of things and provided for it by declaring the supremacy not only of itself but of the laws made in pursuance of it. The nullity of any act inconsistent with the Constitution is produced by the declaration that the Constitution is supreme law.

I think that he was responsible for putting the flesh and bones on the Constitution.

Are we to admit that the Constitution was never before rightly understood, even by those who framed it?

Do judges follow the Constitution? Well, Yes and No. They follow the Constitution as they understand it.

Day by day, case by case, the Supreme Court is designing a constitution for a country that I do not recognize.

It is arrogant to pretend that ... we can gauge accurately the intent of the Framers [of the Constitution] on application of principle to specific, contemporary questions.

A new world has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states ... to remain the rule of interpretations?

I consider ... the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.

Though written constitutions may be violated in moments of passion or delusion, yet they furnish a text to which those who are watchful may again rally and recall the people. They fix, too, for the people the principles of their political creed.

… tough times is a strong argument with many of us to stretch the Constitution

It would be a novel and dangerous doctrine that a legislature could change the constitution under which it held its existence.

If by the statement that what the Constitution meant at the time of its adoption it means today, it is intended to say that the great clauses of the Constitution must be confined to the interpretation which the framers, with the conditions and outlook of their time would have placed upon them, the statement carries its own refutation. It was to guard against such a narrow conception that Chief Justice Marshall uttered a memorable warning— ‘We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding ... a constitution intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.’