Keep the Constitution

"Emergency does not create power.
Emergency does not increase granted power or remove or diminish
the restrictions imposed upon power granted or reserved.
The Constitution was adopted in a period of grave emergency.
Its grants of power to the federal government and
its limitations of the power of the States
were determined in the light of emergency,
and they are not altered by emergency."
-- Justice Charles Evans Hughes
(1862-1948) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Source: Home Building & Loan Assn v. Blairsdell, 1934
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Charles.Evans.Hughes.Quote.4095


"The Constitution of the United States is a law
for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace,
and covers with the shield of its protection
all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances.
No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences,
was ever invented by the wit of man than
that any of its provisions can be suspended
during any of the great exigencies of government.
Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism,
but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false;
for the government, within the Constitution,
has all the powers granted to it,
which are necessary to preserve its existence;
as has been happily proved by the result
of the great effort to throw off its just authority."
-- Justice David Davis
(1815-1886) U.S. Supreme Court Justice 1862-1877
Source: Ex parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 (1866) DAVIS, J., Opinion of the Court
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/David.Davis.Quote.5879


"It has been thought a considerable advance towards establishing
the principles of Freedom, to say, that government is a compact
between those who govern and those that are governed:
but this cannot be true, because it is putting the effect before
the cause; for as man must have existed before governments existed,
there necessarily was a time when governments did not exist,
and consequently there could originally exist no governors
to form such a compact with. The fact therefore must be, that the
individuals themselves, each in his own personal and sovereign right,
entered into a compact with each other to produce a government:
and this is the only mode in which governments have a right to arise,
and the only principle on which they have a right to exist."
-- Thomas Paine
(1737-1809)
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.Paine.Quote.8124