Alberto Gonzales Quotes

I'm a little uncomfortable with the idea of judges overruling presidents on national security matters.

Nonetheless, so whether it's unconstitutional or not [for judges to overruling presidents], I leave to others.

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.

I don’t know if President (George W.) Bush understood how extreme some of the arguments were about executive power that some people in his administration were making.

Congress is the appropriate place to make laws about our country's immigration policy; it is not something that the president gets to decide on his own.

There's simply no question under "The Constitution," and, frankly, under federal law, that the president of the United States has the authority, in the interest of national security, to determine who has the right to come into this country.

Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas-where we all understood he wanted authority to act-but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

Even the country's first president chafed at the limits placed on him by the writers of the U.S. Constitution. From the nature of the Constitution, ... I must approve all the parts of a bill, or reject it in toto.

People think that the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not. He can postpone. He can delay. But he does not have that power. That has to be an act of Congress.

In going too far, they [presidents] have taken away the individual rights of American citizens.

I want to make sure that as president of the United States that I'm not asserting in some way that my decisions overrule the decisions of prosecutors who are there to uphold the law.

If a president can change some laws, can he change ALL laws? Can he change election laws? Can he change discrimination laws? Are there any laws, under your theory, that he actually HAS to enforce?

My major focus is national security because that's really what the president runs.

We in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the pre-meditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.

Judges are required by our democratic system not to overstep their positions to become policy makers or super-legislators.

The Court is most vulnerable and comes nearest to illegitimacy when it deals with judge-made constitutional law having little or no cognizable roots in the language or design of the Constitution.... There should be, therefore, great resistance to ... redefining the category of rights deemed to be fundamental. Otherwise, the Judiciary necessarily takes to itself further authority to govern the country without express constitutional authority.

The Daily Beast reports today that if Steve Bannon is denied a security clearance, the President could simply overrule that denial and order that security clearance.

I am president, I don't own the country so they are not my forces.

What do we do with a president who can basically change what Congress passed by attaching a letter saying I don't agree with this part or that part?

There is also the issue of personal privacy when it comes the executive power. Throughout our nation's history, whether it was habeas corpus during the Civil War, Alien and Sedition Acts in World War I, or Japanese internment camps in World War II, presidents have gone too far.

I think where I get frustrated at times was the belief that the president can do anything if he just decides he wants to do it.

I reserve the right, as president of the United States to meet with anybody at a time and place of my choosing if I think it's going to keep America safe.

When the President decides to go to war, he no longer needs a declaration of war from congress.

The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America and fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey.

The President of the United States has a much wider power than the German Kaiser had, for he depended on parliament.