George Frisbie Hoar Quotes

[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 imperial Presidency requires a passive Congress.

When Congress consents to the Executive making the budget it will have surrendered the most important part of a representative government.

Congressional power has not so much been usurped by the Presidency as given up to the Presidency by Congress.

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

We have not found a way to give Congress control without depriving the President of essential power.

Does not the President ... submit this subject to Congress for their sanction? Does he not recognize the principle ... that no treaty is binding until we pass the laws for executing it?”

Generals aren't in the business of commenting on the correctness or incorrectness of the President's decisions. Anybody who thinks he should be able to do that ought to be fired on the spot.

The Department of Justice should never be reduced to a political arm of the White House.

In the U.S. Senate a quorum consists of the chairman of the Committee on Finance and a messenger from the White House.

Congressmen take an independent oath to protect and defend the Constitution. They work with the President; they do not work for the President.

No merely legislative body could control a single, concentrated Executive ….

Getting members of Congress to do things they don’t want to do is a crucial part of being President.

I am not responsible to the Senate and will not submit my actions to them.

Congress has chosen to recognize that a president may be forced to pursue legitimate foreign policy objectives by covert means. Such recognition, however, does not mean it surrenders the right to be informed of covert measures so that it can express its views as to the legitimacy of the goals or the wisdom of seeking to achieve them.

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

Foreign policy is always a sticking point between Congress and the executive.

The American system is so constituted that it produces a conflict between the Executive and Congress every time the Executive tries to be positive and strong.

Legislative power is always superior to the executive.

If the president can make whatever policy he likes, we are governed not by law, but by the arbitrary whims of one man ...

I am well aware of what three past presidents have said, but that will not be worth five cents if the people and the Congress do not support their president now.”

The President has to persuade Congress to do what they do not want to do.

The powers of the Senate over appointments were trifled with and disregarded by reappointing persons who had been already rejected …. The veto power conferred by the Constitution as a remedy for ill-considered legislation, was turned by him into a weapon of offence against Congress

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.