George Washington Quotes

I think Donald Trump understands there's a Constitution. And that those separate but equal branches of government give us a limited government. And he believes that.

A constitution is the arrangement of magistracies in a state.

On form of government, there should be checks and balances, and PM should be responsible to Parliament.

Government is necessary for our survival. We need government in order to survive. The Founding Fathers created a special place for government. It is called the Constitution.

The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries.

Here, also, has been evolved the form of government consistent with the largest possible civil liberty.

In order to judge of the form to be given to this institution [the Senate], it will be proper to take a view of the ends to be served by it. These were,—first, to protect the people against their rulers, secondly, to protect the people against the transient impressions into which they themselves might be led.

The Powers of the Head of State is not unlimited …. he is not a dictator since his power is not unlimited.

All free governments are party governments.

The constitution supposes, what the History of all Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.

… in contriving any system of government and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest. By this interest we must govern him and, by means of it, make him, notwithstanding his insatiable avarice and ambition, cooperate to public good.

I consider the veto power, therefore, given by the Constitution to the Executive of the United States solely as a conservative power, to be used only first, to protect the Constitution from violation; secondly, the people from the effects of hasty legislation where their will has been probably disregarded or not well understood, and, thirdly, to prevent the effects of combinations violative of the rights of minorities.

As for us BRITONS, thank Heaven, we have a better Sense of Government deliver’d to us from our Ancestors. We have the Notion of A PUBLIC and A CONSTITUTION; how a Legislative, and how an Executive is model’d.

The founders did not trust human beings, and that is what the Constitution is about.

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

In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest.

We need to reinstate the idea of federalism.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

The notion that the Supreme Court comes up with the ruling and that automatically subjects the two other branches to following it defies everything there is about the three equal branches of government. The Supreme Court is not the supreme branch. And for God's sake, it isn't the Supreme Being. It is the Supreme Court.

I, sir, have always conceived - I believe those who proposed the constitution conceived,and it is still more fully known, and more material to observe, those who ratified the constitution conceived, that this is not an indefinite government deriving its powers from the general terms prefixed to the specified powers - but, a limited government tied down to the specified powers, which explain and define the general terms.

The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.

The Constitution cannot protect us unless we protect the Constitution.

The Constitution is brilliant for accountability; for posing factions against each other, to fight amongst themselves in government, which protects our liberty. But also in ensuring that decision-making is made by those who the people can hold accountable.

We need to keep trying to rescue the Constitution from the President.

[I]n the next place, to show that unless these departments be so far connected and blended as to give to each a constitutional control over the others, the degree of separation which the maxim requires, as essential to a free government, can never in practice be duly maintained.