Executive Power Quotes

Don’t any of you realize that there is only one life between this madman and the Presidency.

Our Presidents should not be able to conduct secret operations which violate our principles, jeopardize our rights, and have not been subject to the checks and balances which normally keep policies in line

John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

I've got a pen, and I've got a phone, and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive action. I've got a pen to talk executive actions where congress won't. Where congress isn't acting, I'll act on my own. I have got a pen and I got a phone. And that is all I need.

We" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people

I've got a pen and I've got a phone - and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

The courts were afraid to challenge executive declarations of what would happen. Now, over the last year, we have seen - in almost every single court that has had this sort of national-security case - that they have become markedly more skeptical.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

In effect, Hillary Clinton would be abolishing the lawmaking powers of Congress in order to write her own laws from the Oval Office. And you see what bad judgment she has. She has seriously bad judgment.

I have fiercely criticized both the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies and the Obama administration's - and fiercely defended both as well.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.

The 22nd Amendment limiting a president to two terms is an act of retroactive vindictiveness rather than judicious thinking about the institutions of the republic.

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public.

The law of unintended consequences, far more than the Constitution, is what governs the modern presidency.

It was not revolution as men are prone to say. It was a popular expansion of governmental powers beyond all constitutional grants; and nearly all men everywhere hope the President may succeed.

The conspiracy is nearly completed. The Legislation of the Republic is in the hands of this handful of Slaveholders. The United States Senate assures it to them. The Executive power of the Government is theirs. Buchanan took the oath of fealty to them on the steps of the Capitol last Wednesday. The body which gives the supreme law of the land, has just acceded to their demands, and dared to declare that under the charter of the Nation, men of African descent are not citizens of the United States and can not be -- that the Ordinance of 1787 was void -- that human Slavery is not a local thing, but pursues its victims to free soil, clings to them wherever they go, and returns with them -- that the American Congress has no power to prevent the enslavement of men in the National Territories -- that the inhabitants themselves of the Territories have no power to exclude human bondage from their midst -- and that men of color can not be suitors for justice in the Courts of the United States!

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.

President Obama was well known for his interfering in Justice Department matters.

Congress is the appropriate place to make laws about our country's immigration policy; it is not something that the president gets to decide on his own.

Harry Truman's decision to fire Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War in April 1951 shocked the American political system and astonished the world. Much of the world didn't realize the president had the power to fire a five-star general; much of America didn't realize Truman had the nerve.

The Cold War is over. The kind of authority that the presidents asserted during the Cold War has now been diminished.

Are you willing to let any President choose what laws to enforce and what laws to change?

The Secretary of State has always stood as much alone as the historian. Required to look far ahead and around him, he measures forces unknown to party managers, and has found Congress more or less hostile since Congress first sat.

A president shouldn't tell the judiciary what to do.

The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America and fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey.