Binding Agreements Quotes

A treaty is only another name for a bargain: and that it would be impossible to find a nation who would make any bargain with us, which would be binding on them absolutely, but on us only so long as and so far as we may think proper to be bound by it ... treaties are made not by one of the contracting parties but by both, and consequently that as the consent of both was essential to their formation at first, so must it ever afterwards be to alter or cancel them.

We are not free to break our covenants and escape the consequences.

The vow that binds too strictly snaps itself.

He that imposes an oath makes it, Not he that for conveniences takes it. Then how can any man be said To break an oath he never made.

I do not believe any president can bind a successor president to give up his fundamental role as protector of the country.

And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.

In most of the European countries - France stands out in its resistance to this particular form of American cultural imperialism - the national film industries were forced onto the defensive after the war by such binding agreements.

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?”

If conquest does not bind posterity, so neither can compact bind it.