...revolutionary ardor. He warned against looking "at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem[ing] them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched,"" and he is known famously for his insistence that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to...

...pretty much as it is and extend it for several more years? Mr. Chairman, Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious...and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment." I think those are fitting words as we begin the consideration of the post-ISTEA era. I, for one, do not...

...concrete aims than if a hotly contested amendment campaign were waged and won. According to Jefferson, "(s]ome men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched."81 Madison was not one of these men. He did not wish...

...referring to amendment of the Constitution, but he might as well have been referring to interpretation: Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious...amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience...

...interest and passion' of popular majorities and provide a rallying point against a usurping government. -k Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious...did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; 1 belonged to it, and labored with it — But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand...

...misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering. Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing...with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom...

...ed. 1905) ("Some men look at constitutions with a sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe...amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it... .It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience...

...occasional, and sometimes violent, antagonism against the Constitution and particularly against those who "look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence...the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched," was motivated by a feeling of outrage about the injustice that only his generation should have it in...

...similar point in an 1816 letter, "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence. . . . They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human. ... I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It...

...constitution. It was in this letter that TJ famously attacked excessive reverence for constitutions: "Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious...amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience...