Daniel Patrick Moynihan Quotes

The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.

The dangers of a concentration of all power in the general government of a confederacy so vast as ours are too obvious to be disregarded.

The Framers (of the Constitution) were not concerned primarily with favoring one type of government over another, but with limiting the power of government, regardless of its source.

THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its branches.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

In our system of democracy, our government works on a system of checks and balances. Instead of stripping power from the courts, I believe we should follow the process prescribed in our Constitution - consideration of a Constitutional amendment.

The Democrats have come right out and said it: the power of the central government shall have no limits at all.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

I believe that Americans should be deeply skeptical of government power. You cannot trust people in power. The founders knew that. That's why they divided power among three branches, to set interest against interest.

The Constitution is government's stop sign. It says, you - the three branches of government - can go so far and no farther.

Under the Articles of Confederation, the national government had the power to issue commands to the several sovereign states, but it had no authority to govern individuals directly.

The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality.

In our Constitution governmental power is divided among three separate branches of the national government, three separate branches of State governments, and the peoples of the several States.

In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule.

The Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

The American people want a large government that can do all kinds of things ... that are not within the enumerated powers [of the Constitution.]

Americans are naturally suspicious of too much government and they see divided government as a safeguard.

Our devotion to individual freedom limits our readiness to give central government the power to override our traditional power structure.

We have an inherently weak institution in the Presidency. It was intentionally set up that way by the founders.

The framers of our Constitution came up with two major contributions to the art of government. The first was the idea of an executive not dependent on the political support of the legislature. The second was the idea of the judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches.

The Federal government we have today is unimaginable in the perspective of the Americans who debated the ratification of the original constitution.

The founders designed a government in which it was easier to do nothing than it was to do a great deal all at once.

I start with a concern about the growth of federal government. I start with a perspective concerned about the growth of that power, and containing it within the bounds of the Constitution.

We have become bound by a political straitjacket that frames every debate: Too much federal government. Yet our forefathers forged this system for us. The federal government can accomplish what the states, acting alone or even in concert, cannot.

I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.