The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
Interpretation
The U.S. Constitution is adaptable and innovative in governing a diverse nation.
Franklin D. Roosevelt emphasizes the remarkable flexibility and resilience of the U.S. Constitution, which allows it to address various challenges and changes in society while maintaining the core principles of governance. This elasticity enables the Constitution to remain relevant and effective as the nation evolves over time.
In practice
In a discussion about the effectiveness of the U.S. government, this quote can highlight the Constitution's ability to adapt.
There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!
The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today.
A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.
A world turned into a stereotype, a society converted into a regiment, a life translated into a routine, make it difficult for either art or artists to survive. Crush individuality in society and you crush art as well. Nourish the conditions of a free life and you nourish the arts, too.
[Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.
It's in responsibility that most people find the meaning that sustains them through life. It's not in happiness. It's not in impulsive pleasure.
The possession of arbitrary power has always, the world over, tended irresistibly to destroy humane sensibility, magnanimity, and truth.
We have to keep asking ourselves: 'What does it all mean? What is God trying to tell us? How are we called to live in the midst of all this?' Without such questions our lives become numb and flat.
Faith is not believing that God can, but that God will.
The roots of all living things are tied together. Deep in the ground of being, they tangle and embrace. This understanding is expressed in the term nonduality. If we look deeply, we find that we do not have a separate self-identity, a self that does not include sun and wind, earth and water, creatures and plants, and one another.
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