Daniel Webster Quotes

Good intentions will always be pleaded, for every assumption of power; but they cannot justify it ... It is hardly too strong to say, that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention, real or pretended.

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

The idea of restraining the Legislative authority [by the constitution], in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements, which owe their origin for a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.

How can those who are invested with the power of government be prevented from the abuse of those powers as the means of aggrandizing themselves? ... Without a strong constitution to counteract the strong tendency of government to disorder and abuse there can be little progress or improvement.

How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant.

Yes, citizens, Iturbide was a traitor, a hypocrite and an impious man who destroyed the assembly in which the people had deposited their sovereignty in order to appropriate it all to himself

Power over men is itself a satisfaction, besides providing opportunity to better one's circumstances with a minimum of exertion. Hence, the lust for power increases with its enjoyment and restraint is added to restraint. The government instituted to prevent men from transgressing one another's equal rights thus tends to become a transgressor of the rights of all. The injustice is far more oppressive than anyone man can do unto another, and the interests of freedom can be served only by restraint of government.

One must be especially wary of an Administration that seems to feel that what it judges to be a good end, always justifies any means.

[The impeachment power] is the heaviest piece of artillery in the congressional arsenal, but because it is so heavy it is unfit for ordinary use.

The weapon which the president has chosen to achieve his end [packing the Supreme Court] is a two-way sort. It may serve the cause of liberty today but tomorrow it could prove just as effective in the hands of a despotic reactionary.

Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good with their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation.

The power of imprisonment … being the most natural and potent engine of arbitrary government, it is absolutely necessary to remove it from a government which is free and legal.

The danger of undue power in the President is not, to me, formidable.

War is a terribly destructive force, even beyond the limits of the battlefronts and the war zones. It's influence involves the whole community. It warps men's judgement, distorts the true standard of patriotism, breeds distrust and suspicion among neighbors, inflames passions, encourages violence, develops abuse of power, tyrannizes over men and women even in the purely social relations of life, and terrifies whole communities into the most abject surrender of every right which is the heritage of free government.

There is always some plausible reason for the latitudinarian constructions which are resorted to for the purpose of acquiring power – some evil to be avoided, or some good to be attained by pushing the powers of the government beyond their legitimate boundary. It is by yielding to such influences that constitutions are gradually undermined, and finally overthrown.

Absolute power should never be trusted to man. It has perverted the wisest heads, and corrupted the best hearts in the world. I should be afraid to commit my property, liberty and life to a body of angels for one whole year.

When the tyranny of the state is combined with the hypocrisy of the church, you have a modern example of the twin vultures that have devoured man, and his rights, throughout the ages.

Republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs.

It would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights... Confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism. 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... Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution

Aware of the tendency of power to degenerate into abuse, the worthies of our country have secured its independence by the establishment of a Constitution and form of government for our nation, calculated to prevent as well as to correct abuse

The whole Constitution has been erected upon the assumption that the King not only is capable of doing wrong but is more likely to do wrong than other men if he is given the chance.

That's how dictators get started.

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

Many of Reagan's listeners thought he was dreaming. But Reagan had faith in freedom. He knew that communism, although militarily powerful, was ideologically dead. He knew what our Founders knew: that, in a truly legitimate government, power does not come out of the barrel of a gun, but only from the consent of the people.

There are people in positions of power that are righteous about what they believe: they're enacting out evil principles, but they don't believe that that's what they're doing.