Barack Obama Quotes

Those who wrote the Constitution clearly understood that power is dangerous and needs to be limited by being separated - separated not only into the three branches of the national government but also separated as between the whole national government, on the one hand, and the states and the people on the other.

No other country has copied the separation and division of powers that we have.

We have an inherently weak institution in the Presidency. It was intentionally set up that way by the founders.

If we look into the constitutions of the several States, we find that … there is not a single instance in which the several departments of power have been kept absolutely separate and distinct.

This government is acknowledged by all, to be one of enumerated powers.

The founders had a strong distrust for centralized power in a federal government. So they created a government with checks and balances. This was to prevent any branch of the government from becoming too powerful.

I do believe that it was through divine providence that the Founding Fathers drafted a document that created a government that didn't trust each other - hence the separation of powers. And then, to close the deal, the Bill of Rights was added to continue to protect individual rights and freedoms.

A constitution, in the American sense of the word, is a written instrument by which the fundamental powers of the government are established, limited, and defined, and by which these powers are distributed among several departments, for their more safe and useful exercise, for the benefit of the body politic.

No one branch of the U.S. government should have supremacy over the other two.

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 Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

Our government is composed of checks …

The Constitution reminds us that the government that produces free people is one of divided power.

The framers of our Constitution came up with two major contributions to the art of government. The first was the idea of an executive not dependent on the political support of the legislature. The second was the idea of the judiciary independent of the executive and legislative branches.

The American political system is a giant bureaucracy.

THE Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The FIRST relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the States. The SECOND, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power among its branches.

But Connecticut and Rhode Island have originally realized the most perfect polity as to a legislature.

Our Founding Fathers crafted a constitutional Republic for the first time in the history of the world because they were shaping a form of government that would not have the failures of a democracy in it, but had the representation of democracy in it.

The founding leaders of our country believed in a three-part sharing of governmental power, with each branch jealously watching the actions of the other two.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

It is the union of independence and dependence of these branches - legislative, executive and judicial - and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvellous genius of this unrivalled document.

It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that's just not what the founders intended.

It was the separation of powers upon which the framers placed their hopes for the preservation of the people's liberties. Despite this heritage, the congress has been in too many cases more than willing to walk away from its constitutional powers.

In the Constitution of the American Republic there was a deliberate and very extensive and emphatic division of governmental power for the very purpose of preventing unbridled majority rule.