Roger Scruton Quotes

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.

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

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

Americans have to have a link with their Constitution. They have to understand it in the context of their own time.

Our greatest present disloyalty to the Constitution lies in the fact that we do not study and criticize it as did the men who devised and adopted it.

They keep such a dingdong about “supporting the Constitution.” One might imagine it was some miserable, decrepit old creature that was no longer able to totter on crutches but must be held on every side, and dragged along like a drunken loafer, on his road to the lock-up.

A flag burning Constitutional amendment would rip the fabric of the Constitution at its very center.

A commitment to the Constitution is not something that's genetic. It's not inherited. It's not automatic. It has to be taught. And each generation must learn about the Constitution and the values of constitutional institutions within the context of their own time, within the environment of their own time.

Anybody who questions the validity of the Constitution, whether it works in the modern era, should never be president.

The more I study it [the Constitution], the more I have come to admire it, realizing that no other document devised by the hand of man ever brought so much progress and happiness to humanity.

Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.

You either believe in the Constitution, or you don't.

The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right.

I taught the Constitution for ten years, I believe in the Constitution.

The conscience of this nation is the Constitution.

Is there a man who will say that the Constitution wants no reform? Will any man be found to say that the Constitution is perfect?

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.

They [our founding fathers] saw the need from the very outset to improve the product [the Constitution].

I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve of them; for having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise .... In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such .... I doubt too whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.

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.

The best way to have empathy for people and the best way to have empathy for our Constitution is to appoint judges who will rule based on the law and to have empathy, if you will, for the law only and to rule based on the law.

I do not have the luxury of deciding which provisions of the Ohio Constitution to defend.

Every constitutional standard is engaged in difficult but important line-drawing.

What secret knowledge, one must wonder, is breathed into lawyers when they become Justices of this Court that enables them to discern that a practice which the text of the Constitution does not clearly proscribe, and which our people have regarded as constitutional for 200 years, is in fact unconstitutional?

The Constitution is a total living document that can change quite a bit.