„I repeat that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington.“

Add translation

— Ulysses Simpson Grant

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)
Contesto: In his first annual message to Congress the same views are forcibly presented, and are again urged in his eighth message. I repeat that the adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution completes the greatest civil change and constitutes the most important event that has occurred since the nation came into life. The change will be beneficial in proportion to the heed that is given to the urgent recommendations of Washington. If these recommendations were important then, with a population of but a few millions, how much more important now, with a population of 40,000,000, and increasing in a rapid ratio.

Estratto da Wikiquote. Ultimo aggiornamento 03 Giugno 2021.

Ulysses Simpson Grant photo

Ulysses Simpson Grant2

18º presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America 1822 - 1885

Citazioni simili

„It is unusual to notify the two Houses of Congress by message of the promulgation, by proclamation of the Secretary of State, of the ratification of a constitutional amendment. In view, however, of the vast importance of the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution, this day declared a part of that revered instrument, I deem a departure from the usual custom justifiable.“

Help us translate this quote

— Ulysses S. Grant 18th President of the United States 1822 - 1885

1870s, Message to the Senate and House of Representatives (1870)

„Our Constitution has raised certain barriers against too hasty change. I believe such provision is wise. I doubt if there has been any change that has ever really been desired by the people which they have not been able to secure. Stability of government is a very important asset. If amendment be made easy, both revolution and reaction, as well as orderly progress, also become easy. The nation has lost little, but has gained much, through the necessity of due deliberation. The pressing need of the present day is not to change our constitutional rights, but to observe our constitutional rights.“

Help us translate this quote

— Calvin Coolidge American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929) 1872 - 1933

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

„We made up our minds that the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution were themselves null and void.“

Help us translate this quote

— Benjamin Tillman American politician 1847 - 1918

Speech to the U.S. Senate https://web.archive.org/web/20160228073733/http://emancipation.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/emancipation/publication/attachments/A_Republican_Text-Book_for_Colored_Voters.pdf (23 March 1900)
1900s, 1900

„The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. NO thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people.“

Help us translate this quote

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

1880s, Inaugural address (1881)
Contesto: The will of the nation, speaking with the voice of battle and through the amended Constitution, has fulfilled the great promise of 1776 by proclaiming 'liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof.' The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787. NO thoughtful man can fail to appreciate its beneficent effect upon our institutions and people. It has freed us from the perpetual danger of war and dissolution. It has added immensely to the moral and industrial forces of our people. It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both. It has surrendered to their own guardianship the manhood of more than 5,000,000 people, and has opened to each one of them a career of freedom and usefulness.

„[My] approach recognizes the basic principle of a written Constitution. We "the people" adopted a written Constitution precisely because it has a fixed meaning, a meaning that does not change. Otherwise we would have adopted the British approach of an unwritten, evolving constitution. Aside from amendment according to Article V, the Constitution’s meaning cannot be updated, or changed, or altered by the Supreme Court, the Congress, or the President. Of course, even when strictly interpreted as I believe it should be, the Constitution remains a modern, "breathing" document as some like to call it, in the sense that the Court is constantly required to interpret how its provisions apply to the Constitutional questions of modern life. Nevertheless, strict interpretation must never surrender to the understandably attractive impulse towards creative but unwarranted alterations of first principles.“

Help us translate this quote

— Clarence Thomas Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1948

Speech to the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 2 February 2001.
2000s

„The two-thirds rule [of the Senate], which can be changed only by constitutional amendment, will no doubt continue for a long time to come. Like monogamy, it is not completely satisfactory, but, like monogamy, it has won general if somewhat grudging acquiescence.“

Help us translate this quote

— Thomas A. Bailey American historian 1902 - 1983

A Diplomatic History of the American People, 7th ed., p. 17

„I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that's what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other, and how we treat the family.“

Help us translate this quote

— Mike Huckabee Arkansas politician 1955

Morning Joe
Television
MSNBC
2008-01-15, quoted in * David
Edwards
Muriel
Kane
Huckabee: Amend Constitution to be in 'God's standards'
2008-01-15
Raw Story
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Huckabee_Amend_Constitution_to_meet_Gods_0115.html
2011-03-01
Mike Huckabee: Amend the Constitution to God's Standards
2008-01-15
YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D08Dq_iNMRk
2011-03-01

„Charlton Heston…recently was re-elected president of the NRA for the third term. And they made an exception, because their charter, their constitution, says you can only have two terms, but they changed it. Ah. So constitutions can change. Interesting. Because it is called the Second Amendment.“

Help us translate this quote

— Bill Maher American stand-up comedian 1956

The word "amendment" itself means, "We had another thought! We re-thought something!"
Be More Cynical (2000)

„You've got the Bush Administration using that event in such a disrespectful and immoral way — using the deaths of those people to try and shred our civil liberties, change our Constitution, round people up. That's not how you honor them, by using them to change our way of life as a free country.“

Help us translate this quote

— Michael Moore American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist 1954

On the use of the September 11th attacks to expand governmental powers and diminish civil liberties, through "The Patriot Act". — CBS interview (June 2004) http://news4colorado.com/topstories/topstories_story_179195105.html
2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

„Surely they knew that the very idea of the future came in an American box - complete with instructions for assembling a Constitution, a MacDonald's hamburger franchise, a row of Marriot hotels and a First Amendment.“

Help us translate this quote

— Lewis H. Lapham American journalist 1935

Origine: Money And Class In America (1989), Chapter 10, Envoi, p. 237

„It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.“

Help us translate this quote

— Calvin Coolidge American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929) 1872 - 1933

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

„Charlton Heston… recently was re-elected president of the NRA for the third term. And they made an exception, because their charter, their constitution, says you can only have two terms, but they changed it. Ah. So constitutions can change. Interesting. Because it is called the Second Amendment. The word "amendment" itself means, "We had another thought! We re-thought something!"“

Help us translate this quote

— Bill Maher American stand-up comedian 1956

Be More Cynical (2000)

„In some of our States, an act passed by two different legislatures, chosen by the people, at different and successive elections, is sufficient to make a change in the constitution. As this mode may be rendered more or less easy, by requiring the approbation of fewer or more successive legislatures, according to the degree of difficulty thought sufficient, and yet safe, it is evidently the best principle which can be adopted for constitutional amendments.“

Help us translate this quote

— Thomas Jefferson 3rd President of the United States of America 1743 - 1826

1820s, Letter to A. Coray (1823)
Contesto: But, whatever be the constitution, great care must be taken to provide a mode of amendment, when experience or change of circumstances shall have manifested that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the nation. In some of our States it requires a new authority from the whole people, acting by their representatives, chosen for this express purpose, and assembled in convention. This is found ' too difficult for remedying the imperfections which experience develops from time to time in an organization of the first impression. A greater facility of amendment is certainly requisite to maintain it in a course of action accommodated to the times and changes through which we are ever passing. In England the constitution may be altered by a single act of the legislature, which amounts to the having no constitution at all. In some of our States, an act passed by two different legislatures, chosen by the people, at different and successive elections, is sufficient to make a change in the constitution. As this mode may be rendered more or less easy, by requiring the approbation of fewer or more successive legislatures, according to the degree of difficulty thought sufficient, and yet safe, it is evidently the best principle which can be adopted for constitutional amendments.

„What a mockery today's opinion makes of Hamilton's expectation, announcing the Court's conclusion - that the meaning of our Constitution has changed over the past 15 years—not, mind you, not that this Court's decision 15 years ago was wrong, but that the Constitution has changed. The Court reaches this implausible result by purporting to advert, not to the original meaning of the Eighth Amendment, but to the evolving standards of decency, of our national society. It then finds, on the flimsiest of grounds, that a national consensus which could not be perceived in our people's laws barely 15 years ago now solidly exists.“

Help us translate this quote

— Antonin Scalia former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1936 - 2016

On executing minors: Roper v. Simmons (2005) (dissenting).
2000s

„And that is what the Constitution is all about -- providing freedom from abuse by those in authority. Anyone who says the American Constitution is obsolete just because social and economic conditions have changed does not understand the real genius of the Constitution. It was designed to control something which has not changed and will not change - namely, human nature.“

Help us translate this quote

— W. Cleon Skousen ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist 1913 - 2006

The 5,000 Year Leap (1981)

„If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.“

Help us translate this quote

— Ludwig Wittgenstein Austrian-British philosopher 1889 - 1951

Origine: Culture and Value (1980), p. 53e

„We need a constitutional amendment to make the federal government obey the Constitution.“

Help us translate this quote

— James Bovard American journalist 1956

From The Bush Betrayal (Palgrave, 2004) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigram%20page%20Bush%20Betrayal.htm

„No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity“

Help us translate this quote

— Leo Tolstoy Russian writer 1828 - 1910

Origine: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Contesto: No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion.
And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.

„The First Amendment, I think, is the jewel of our Constitution.“

Help us translate this quote

— Samuel Alito Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States 1950

Alito: Threat to Judicial Independence at Historic High http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1159866330219, by Michael Scholl [2006-10-04].

„People generally don't change unless a traumatic event occurs in their life which triggers the brain into new action.“

Help us translate this quote

— Jordan Peterson Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology 1962

Other

Argomenti correlati