William Henry Harrison Quotes

The Founders of this Nation entrusted the lawmaking power to the Congress alone in both good and bad times … the President's power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a law-maker.

I do not believe that we [Congress] should allow him [the President] to nullify acts of Congress by executive fiat. There is not one syllable in the Constitution which authorizes the President to exercise such power.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

... the opinion of the Supreme Court ... ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court, must each be guided by its own opinion of the constitution.

The most important benefit that I can confer on the country by my Presidency is to insist upon the entire independence of the executive and legislative branches of government

it would be so dangerous for the Executive in a single Person to negative a Law that the People will not accept of it.

Under our constitutional system, the executive executes the laws that Congress has passed. It should not be executing laws that Congress has rejected.

There are checks and balances and broad separation of powers under the Constitution. Each organ of the State, i.e. the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, must have respect for the others and not encroach into each other's domain.

I decline submitting my officials rights and powers to the determination of a coordinate department, usurping a jurisdiction unprecedented in the history of our country, and fraught with the greatest danger to our institutions. I shall deem it my imperative duty to repel, with all of the force vested in this department, any infringement upon my rights and powers.

Separation of powers means that the president cannot control Congress.

Federal bureaucracies are creatures of Congress, not the executive.

If our forefathers had wanted Congress to be the Commander in Chief, they would have said so.

The authority of Congress must be respected …. The President must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

The authority of the Supreme Court must not ... be permitted to control the Congress, or the Executive, when acting in their legislative capacities.

The President may be right in how he reads the Constitution. But he also may be wrong. And if he is wrong, who is there to tell him so? And if there is no one, the President, of course, is free to pursue his course of erroneous interpretations. What then becomes of our constitutional form of government?

The power to make war is vested in Congress and not in the President. Congress has no constitutional authority to grant such authority to the president.

It is up to Congress to see to it that its powers do not slip through its fingers

It has been the judiciary that has preserved the Constitution rather than the other two separated powers.

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”

The judicial branch of the government is the least dangerous because … it has no influence over either the sword or the purse.

It would be improper to put it in the power of any Man to negative a Law passed by the Legislature because it would give him the control of the Legislature

Our Founding Fathers created the Executive Branch to implement and enforce the laws written by Congress, and vested this power in the president.

I rise in support of the separation of powers as established by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution. The Constitution clearly delegates the power to deal with criminal matters, like the use of drugs, to the States.

Nothing in the 14th Amendment or in any other constitutional provision suggests that the president may usurp legislative power to prevent a violation of the Constitution.