Limited Authority Quotes

What could be tolerated when government was small cannot be endured when government is big.

We are not at liberty to add one jot of power to the national government beyond what the people have granted by the constitution

Why did the Articles [of Confederation] fail so completely? Most historians believe the founding fathers spent a great deal of their first constitutional convention drafting the delaration of independence and only realized on July 3rd the Articles were also due.

[Describing the vice presidency:] ... inside work with no heavy lifting.

Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules ; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a bail game to see the umpire.

The fountain of power remaineth most eminently in the people; therefore it is unlimited in the people, and bounded and limited in the king, and so less in the king than in the people.

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

It may be truly said of every government, as well as of that of the United States, that it has only a right to pass such laws as are necessary and proper to accomplish the objects entrusted to it. For no government has a right to do merely what it pleases

I can't speak on behalf of the show. I'm not a creator; I'm just a pawn.

The Iranian leaders describe the American government exactly the way American analysts describe the Iranian one, as an opaque, factionalized system with competing power centers, over which the president exercises very limited authority.

We can't stop anybody from doing what they want to do.

When you're a former president, you have much less power, but you have a lifetime of experience and contacts and if you've got the energy, you can bring influence to bear on a small but still fairly substantial number of things where you can concentrate on it because you don't have to change the subject when you wake up in the morning and there's something else in the newspaper.

The least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.

I cannot subscribe to the omnipotence of a State Legislature.

I think the presidency is an institution over which you have temporary custody.

It's often said of American politics that it's a huge juggernaut and the president can change the direction by two or three degrees in either direction, but not much more. In fact, I think the president's power is limited, much more than the prime minister in England.

The President of the United States is not the Sovereign of the United States. There is a very near analogy between the position of the President of the United States and that of the Prime Minister of England, and both are paid at much the same rate — the income of a second-class professional man. The Sovereign of the United States is the people;

I have - I have more than an interesting task in piloting Wales into our new democracy, without wanting to exercise draconian powers on behalf of anybody else - I can assure of that.

The genius of Republican liberty, seems to demand on one side, not only that all power should be derived from the people; but, that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence on the people, by a short duration of their appointments; and, that, even during this short period, the trust should be placed not in a few, but in a number of hands.

The vice presidency is a monkey cage.

The nature of constitutional delegations of power is that they entitle the empowered official to do certain things that other people can't do.

Politicians have limited power. They can't impose morality on themselves. How can they impose it on the country?

We [the Government] are here not as masters but as servants, we are not here to glory in power, but to attest our loyalty to the commands and restrictions laid down by our sovereign, the people of the United States, in whose name and by whose will we exercise our brief authority.

The government understands - every government, every administration, both parties, understands - that that power, they just don't have.

Being president, you may have more power than anyone else in the country, but you quickly discover that you have much, much less than you thought you'd have going in. You're hamstrung in ways you never dreamed of.