Benjamin Franklin Quotes

No Man would be so daring as to place a veto on a Law that had passed with the assent of the Legislature

[Legislators] can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws and place it in the hands of others.

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

It may be said, indeed, that the Constitution has given to the Executive the power to annul the acts of the legislative body by refusing to them his assent.

Government is not a bottom line enterprise. You can get yourself elected ... but you can't fire the legislature if they won't do what you want.

Determination by the legislature of what constitutes proper exercise of police power is not final or conclusive. It is subject to supervision by the courts.

[Congress is] the chief aggrandizer of the Executive.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

[Then a congressman:] Were I President, I should desire the legislation of the country to rest with Congress, uninfluenced by the executive in its origin or progress.

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.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive.

We [the Supreme Court] may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers.

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

For more than 500 years -- since the rise of nation-states and parliaments -- a preoccupation of Western political thought has been the problem of defining and confining executive power.

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

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

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.

The independence of the legislative arm must be respected. I had little taste for forcing Congressional action.

It is not the Congress's job to rubber stamp bad decisions [of the President.]

... 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 Executive should be able to be removed from office by the national Legislature, on the Petition of seven States.

I am in favor of seven years [term for the President] and future ineligibility. By this Provision the executive is made independent of the Legislature, who may be his Electors if he could be re-elected; he will be complaisant to the Legislature to obtain their favor and his own re-election.

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.

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch