John Randolph Quotes

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

The power to make war is vested in Congress and not in the President. Congress has no constitutional authority to grant such authority to the president.

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

The vast importance of the trust, and the operations of treaties as laws, plead strongly for the participation ... of the legislative body in the office of making them ... It must indeed be clear to a demonstration that the joint possession of the power in question, by the President and Senate, would afford a greater prospect of security, than the separate possession of it by either of them

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.

The authority to declare war rests in Congress, not in an out-of-control president.

The judicial cannot prescribe to the legislative departments of the government limitations upon exercise of its acknowledged powers. The power to tax may be exercised oppressively on persons, but the responsibility … not to the courts, but to the people by whom its members are elected.

The imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

I am not responsible to the Senate and will not submit my actions to them.

If our forefathers had wanted Congress to be the Commander in Chief, they would have said so.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

Foreign policy is always a sticking point between Congress and the executive.

The office of the President is not such a very difficult one to fill, his duties being mainly to execute the laws of Congress. Should I be chosen for this exalted position, I would execute the laws of Congress as faithfully as I have always executed the orders of my superiors.

The federal courts do not sit as an ombudsman, refereeing the disputes between the other two branches.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The Executive is as independent of either House of Congress as either House of Congress is independent of him, and they cannot call for the records of his actions, or the action of his officers against his consent, any more than he can call for any of the journals or records of the House or Senate.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not ... be permitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities.

I am well aware of what three past presidents have said, but that will not be worth five cents if the people and the Congress do not support their president now.”

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.

A committee of the Senate ought to confer with a committee of the President through a head of a department and not with the Chief Magistrate, for in the latter case a committee of that House is equal to the President.