Joseph Story > Quotes

“Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people in order to betray them.”
― Joseph Story, Commentaries On The Constitution Of The United States: With A Preliminary Review Of The Constitutional History Of The Colonies And States, Before The Adoption Of The Constitution : In Two Volumes

“One of the surest means of preserving peace is always to be prepared for war.”
― Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States

“The truth is, that the European nations paid not the slightest regard to the rights of the native tribes. They treated them as mere barbarians and heathens, whom, if they were not at liberty to extirpate, they were entitled to deem mere temporary occupants of the soil. They might convert them to Christianity; and, if they refused conversion, they might drive them from the soil, as unworthy to inhabit it. They affected to be governed by the desire to promote the cause of Christianity, and were aided in this ostensible object by the whole influence of the Papal power. But their real object was, to extend their own power, and increase their own wealth, by acquiring the treasures, as well as the territory, of the New World. Avarice and ambition were at the bottom of all their original enterprises.”
― Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States

“How easily men satisfy themselves that the Constitution is exactly what they wish it to be”
― Joseph Story

“The real object of the First Amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance Mohammedanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects and to prevent any national ecclesiastical patronage of the national government.”
― Joseph Story

“There never has been a period of history, in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundation. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story:
1829 speech at Harvard.”
― Joseph Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story

“at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the [First] Amendment...the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. Any attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
― Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States