Separation Of Powers Quotes

He who has the greatest power put into his hands will only become the more impatient of any restraint in the use of it.

Religion and Government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.

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

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

The Constitution of the United States, with its elaborate checks and balances, clearly reflected the view that no one was ever to be completely trusted with power. This was in sharp contrast to the French Revolution, which gave sweeping powers, including the power of life and death, to those who spoke in the name of “the people,” expressing the Rousseauean “general will.” Even when bitterly disappointed with particular leaders, who were then deposed and executed, believers in this vision did not substantially change their political systems or beliefs, viewing the evil as localized in individuals who had betrayed the revolution…To the Federalists, the evil was inherent in man, and institutions were simply ways of trying to cope with it.

With whom is one supposed to do business in this country?

A government of laws, not of men.

The court doesn't follow public opinion. The court's views are radically out of step with public opinion.

The Supreme Court is our ultimate check and balance.

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

Laws themselves, political Constitutions, are not our Life; but only the house wherein our Life is led.

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.

This principle that judges are not politicians lies at the very heart of a judicial job - of the judicial job description.

Granting such immunity undermines the constitutional protections Americans trust the Congress to protect.

Judges should interpret the laws according to what they say, not according to what the judges wish they would say. Judges are supposed to interpret the laws; they are not supposed to make them.

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

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.

An elective despotism [i.e. of the Congress] was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.

The legal system we have and the rule of law are far more responsible for our traditional liberties than any system of one man one vote. Any country or Government which wants to proceed towards tyranny starts to undermine legal rights and undermine the law.

As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.

Most decisions involving the way that Americans live their lives are not made in the courts.

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

Courts do not make the law.

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

Conservative political opinion in America cleaves to the tradition of the judge as passive interpreter, believing that his absolute loyalty to authoritative law is the price of his immunity from political pressure and of the security of his tenure.