Seneca the Younger Quotes

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power -- we must have a dispersion of power.

A government that understands the limits of power as well as its potential.

All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time

Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.

Any who wield a large amount of power should always feel the check of power. The very principle on which the nation exists is that no person shall rise above power.

It is not be consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.

No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.

The vice or imperfection of men therefore renders it safer and more tolerable for the government to be in the hands of many, that they may afford each other mutual assistance and admonition, and that if any one arrogate to himself more than is right, the many may act as censors and masters to restrain his ambition.

The president doesn't hold all the cards. The cards are evenly split up!

Free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy, and not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power.

Accumulation of power is as necessary as its diffusion, or rather more so.

It is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.

People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.

The basic premise of the Constitution was a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances because man was perceived as a fallen creature and would always yearn for more power.

The whole basis of the Constitution was a restriction of power, and the whole basis of the federalist system was that there was not one sovereign centralized power from which all authority flows.

The theory of our governments is opposed to the deposit of unlimited power anywhere. The executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches of these governments are all of limited and defined powers

Our government is composed of checks …

The American political process almost instinctively compensates for excessive concentration.

Government of limited power need not be anemic government.

Any coalition, especially where one party is more powerful than the other, it's always bound to have a pecking order.

I do believe that power needs to be returned to the states. I think that we've got way too much power in Washington. This is where I'm focused: way too much power in Washington.

As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.

Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.

Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained.

The great desideratum in Government is, so to modify the sovereignty as that it may be sufficiently neutral between different parts of the Society to controul one part from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the entire Society.