William J. Brennan (Quote)

“For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptibility of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs.

If we are to be as a shining city upon a hill, it will be because of our ceaseless pursuit of the constitutional ideal of human dignity.”

—William J. Brennan, born on April 25, 1906, in a speech given in 1985 rebutting the desire of then-Attorney General Edwin Meese to "resurrect the original meaning of constitutional provisions." Brennan died in 1997.