Quotes about Authority Constraints

George Packer

What can one man do even if he is the president?

Bill Clinton

By the time you become the leader of a country, someone else makes all the decisions.

Thomas S. Foley

The speakership isn't a dictatorship.

Ludwig von Mises

Rulers do not like to admit that their power is restricted by any laws other than those of physics and biology. They never ascribe their failures and frustrations to the violation of economic law.

Lee Radziwill

There were so many things I couldn't do when my brother-in-law was president.

Lysander Spooner

All, or nearly all, the advantage there is in fixing any constitutional limits to the power of a government, is simply to give notice to the government of the point at which it will meet with resistance.

Andrew Johnson

Outside of the Constitution we have no legal authority more than private citizens, and within it we have only so much as that instrument gives us. This broad principle limits all our functions and applies to all subjects.

Lee Kuan Yew

Please do not assume that you can change governments. Young people don’t understand this.

Julius Caesar Augustus

I surpassed all others in authority, but I had no more power than the others who were also my colleagues in office.

When Augustus first achieved power, he shared it with Marc Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in a military dictatorship known as the Second Triumvirate. Augustus was the most influential of the 3, and he eventually pushed the other two out and ruled alone as Emperor.

Michael Hayden

Once you're in a network, you can do a whole bunch of things to that network. It's just that NSA doesn't have the authority to do that.

David A. Fastabend

The sovereign government wasn’t so sovereign.

When there is a partially failed state and the government does not really exercise sovereignty over its claimed territory, it is difficult to assist such a government as they generally insist on pretending that they have sovereignty and always acting the part. For example, the Kurds controlled Northern Iraq yet the Iraq government demanded that we discuss with them issues and programs for the North that they would have no de facto control over and had relatively little influence.

Brett Kavanaugh

However much we might sympathize or agree with EPA's policy objectives, EPA may act only within the boundaries of its statutory authority.

Authority Constraints Quotes