Constitution

Works to read

• The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle (attributed), c. 330 BC · Great Books
• Magna Carta by King John and the barons of England, 1215
• A Disquisition on Government by John C. Calhoun, 1849 (published 1851)
• The Anti-Federalist Papers by Various, 1787-1788
• McCulloch v. Maryland by Supreme Court of the United States, 1819
• Lochner v. New York by Supreme Court of the United States, 1905
• Laws by Plato, c. 348 BC · Great Books
• The Founding Documents by Continental Congress and United States Constitutional Convention, 1776-1791 · Great Books
• The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, 1787-1788 · Great Books
• The Histories, Book VI by Polybius, c. 150 BC
• The Republic and The Laws by Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 54-51 BC
• The Commonwealth of Oceana by James Harrington, 1656

Passages

From the texts

• For the Greeks the constitution was not merely as it is so often with us, a matter of political machinery.

  — Aristotle, Politics

• The proposed Constitution, therefore, is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both.

  — Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers

Verified quotations

• There are three points in the constitution of Solon which appear to be its most democratic features

  — Aristotle (attributed), The Athenian Constitution

• His administration was temperate, as has been said before, and more like constitutional government than a tyranny.

  — Aristotle (attributed), The Athenian Constitution

• Nature creates nothing without a purpose, but always the best possible in each kind of living creature by reference to its essential constitution

  — Aristotle, On the Motion and Gait of Animals

• he had once or twice tried a dose of opium. But he had no hereditary constitutional craving after such transient escapes from the hauntings of misery.

  — George Eliot, Middlemarch

• The man who blushes through shame is not said to be a constitutional blusher, nor is the man who becomes pale through fear said to be constitutionally pale

  — Aristotle, Categories

• And this is the meaning of the maxim, 'All Authority is from God;' which proposition does not express the historical foundation of the Civil Constitution, but an ideal Principle of the Practical Reason

  — Immanuel Kant, The Science of Right

Passages are verified quotations from the library that use one of these words: constitution, constitutional, charter. Sentences under “From the texts” are copied word for word from the full texts in this library. Read each in its context on the work's page.