Thomas Hobbes Quotes

As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.

Their whole civil policy was adverse to concentration of power in the hands of any single individual, but inclined to the opposite principle of division among a number of equals.

To make a division of power effectual, a veto in one form or another is indispensable. The right of each to judge for itself of the extent of the power allotted to its share, and to protect itself in its exercise, is what, in reality, is meant by a division of power.

The president doesn't hold all the cards. The cards are evenly split up!

No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures.

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

It is not be consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.

The vice or imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands of many, that they may afford each other mutual assistance and admonition, and that if any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as censors and masters to restrain his ambition.

If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and they should be separated.... They will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power -- we must have a dispersion of power.

Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals, the society in which they live and the economy in which they work. Most critically, our responsibility in this parliament is how that power is used: whether it is used for the benefit of the few or the many.

Let men learn that a legislature is not 'our God upon earth,' though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.

Accumulation of power is as necessary as its diffusion, or rather more so.

Experience assures us, that the efficacy of the provision has been greatly over-rated; and that some more adequate defense is indispensably necessary for the more feeble, against the more powerful members of the government.

Government power, juxtaposed to private power, is a balance.

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

Political liberty is nothing else but the diffusion of power.

No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.

The American political process almost instinctively compensates for excessive concentration.

Judicial, Legislative and Executive departments ought to be commensurate

… all kinds of government are defective…. sagacious legislators, knowing the vices of each of these systems of government by themselves, have chosen one that should partake of all of them, judging that to be the most stable and solid. In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.

Diffusion of power is the best way to promote democracy.

51 percent of the people should not always get 100% of the power; 51 percent of the people should certainly not get all the power if they use that power to exclude the 49%. In that case, we do not have majority rule. We have majority tyranny.

No single man can bear the whole burden of Empire — I need a colleague, or perhaps several colleagues