John C. Calhoun Quotes

There has been so much power concentrated. There is no leash on that power anymore and Americans face the situation that this power is getting momentum with each passing year with each presidency.

Great wealth took possession of the government. It was reflected in Mr. Harding's selection of a cabinet.

As President Nixon says, presidents can do almost anything, and President Nixon has done many things that nobody would have thought of doing.

The Senate has no army, no navy, no patronage, no lucrative offices, nor glittering honors to bestow. Around us there is no swarm of greedy expectants rendering us homage, anticipating our wishes, and ready to execute our commands. How is it with the President [Andrew Jackson]? Is he powerless? He is felt from one extremity to the other of this republic. By means of principles which he has introduced [the spoils system], and innovations which he has made in our institutions, alas! but too much countenanced by Congress and a confiding people, he exercises uncontrolled the power of the state. In one hand he holds the purse and in the other brandishes the sword of the country! Myriads of dependents and partisans scattered over the land are ever ready to sing hosannas to him and to laud to the skies what ever he does. He has swept over the government like a tropical tornado.

The great defect in the past custom is that executive patronage has come to be regarded as the property of the party in power.

A president with a pen in their hand is a very powerful person.

The peculiar danger of executive power is that it executes.

We have seen the evil of perpetuation of centralization of government, and of control from Great bureaucracies, appointments of courts and control of our foreign relations, all due to the bill-up, accumulated potency and power of one man [FDR] remaining to long in public office.

A president in his first year has a mandate and some political capital. When he picks an issue, he can practically roll any Congress.

When you buy a Presidential candidate, you buy his party and you buy 20,000 appointees you never heard of.

It is a handicap to any man to succeed a member of his own party as President. He has little patronage with which to reward his personal supporters.

There are no necessary evils in government. It's evils exist only in its abuses.

If Presidents are not looking for confrontations with the Congress—even with their own party members—then their aides are.

We have the President assuming powers that are never going to end.

Seward must be got out of the cabinet. He is Lincoln's evil genius. He has been President de Facto, and has kept a sponge saturated with chloroform to Uncle Abe's nose.

The national security state controls the President. It controls most of the executive departments.

It is the curse of the Labor movement that, as soon as it has acquired a certain “power,” it seeks to enlarge this power by unprincipled means. Social-Democracy also was originally “pure” in almost all countries. Most Social-patriots of today were real Marxists. By Marxist propaganda the masses were won, and as soon as the party gained “power,” they [the principled means] were abandoned.

Congress, factious, domineering, tyrannical Congress has undertaken to poison the minds of the American people, and create a feeling against me in consequence of the manner in which I have distributed the public patronage.

basically, the more power politicians have, the hornier they get

… the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it's wrong, and the President can be wrong.

When I came into power, I found that the party managers had taken it all to themselves. I could not name my own Cabinet. They had sold out every place to pay the election expenses.

If our system of government were changed, so as to give to the Governor the duty of overriding and nullifying a definite elective choice by removing an elected official for acts committed prior to his election, with full public knowledge thereof, such change would create in Albany a power so dangerous in the hands of an unscrupulous Governor that the will of the electorate could be wholly destroyed.

When the [political] clubhouse gets control of the seat of government, invariably the private interest outweighs the public interest, and corruption sets in.

A power has arisen up in the Government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many and various and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks.

Human experience long ago taught us that if we allow a man or group of men autocratic powers in government or church, that they use the powers to oppress and defraud the public..