A small child from a developing country has the advantage, from a very early age, of having access to toys which structure his mind, which constitute a sure advantage over the little African child who has never even held a modern toy.
Abdoulaye Wade

Abatement in the hostility of one's enemies must never be thought to signify they have been won over. It only means that one has ceased to constitute a threat.
Quentin Crisp

Black people are inferior to Caucasians. Blacks constitute a totally distinct group; they overshadow the country with the germ... of evil.
David Wilmot

Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.
Thomas Jefferson

By this act the president alone is empowered to make the law, to fix in his mind what acts, words, what thoughts or looks, shall constitute such a crime.
Edward Livingston

Certainly, it may bring to light such a deeper knowledge of the structure of matter as to constitute a veritable discontinuity in the progress of science.
Ernest Lawrence

Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Civilization exists precisely so that there may be no masses but rather men alert enough never to constitute masses.
Georges Bernanos

Crimes of which a people is ashamed constitute its real history. The same is true of man.
Jean Genet

Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence.
Hannah Arendt

Except when war is waged in a desert, noncombatants, also known as civilians or "the people," constitute the great majority of those affected.
Martin Van Creveld

For each chromosome contributed by the sperm there is a corresponding chromosome contributed by the egg, there are two chromosomes of each kind, which together constitute a pair.
Thomas Hunt Morgan

Force does not constitute right... obedience is due only to legitimate powers.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.
Olympia Brown

God leaves to Man the choice of Forms in Government; and those who constitute one Form, may abrogate it.
Algernon Sydney

Human beings and their actions constitute the advancing front, the surging crest of an ongoing movement that never stops.
Corliss Lamont

If a man were living in isolation his income would be literally his product. Make him the monarch and owner of an island, and the fruits that he raises and the clothing that he makes constitute, in themselves, his income. This ceases to be true when trading begins.
John Bates Clark

If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact.
Jurgen Habermas

Intuition and concepts constitute... the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.
Immanuel Kant

It is true that the poet does not directly address his neighbors; but he does address a great congress of persons who dwell at the back of his mind, a congress of all those who have taught him and whom he has admired; they constitute his ideal audience and his better self.
Richard Wilbur