Top 100 Legislative Quotes
#1. The issue here is not gonna be a list of accomplishments. As you said yourself, Steve, you know, I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president - with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln.
Barack Obama
#2. What's brilliant about the United States system of government is separation of power. Not only the executive, legislative, judicial branches, but also the independence of the military from civilians, an independent media and press, an independent central bank.
Feisal Abdul Rauf
#3. [1768] The Billeting Act, which required the colonists to lodge and feed the British troops quartered among them, added fuel to the flames. In 1768 the New York legislature refused to comply, and Parliament suspended its legislative functions.
E. Benjamin Andrews
#4. A legislative act contrary to the Constitution is not law.
John Marshall
#5. It is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another [for the Executive] to be dependent on the legislative body. The first comports with, the last violates, the fundamental principles of good government; and, whatever may be the forms of the Constitution, unites all power in the same hands.
Alexander Hamilton
#6. In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters.
George Will
#7. To embarrass justice by multiplicity of laws, or to hazard it by confidence in judges, seem to be the opposite rocks on which all civil institutions have been wrecked, and between which legislative wisdom has never yet found an open passage.
Samuel Johnson
#8. There's a rhythm to the legislative session and there are rhythms to legislative sessions. So I think that's very important to take into consideration when you are deciding what to do when.
Andrew Cuomo
#9. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.
James Madison
#10. Certainly on a political and a legislative level, Bill Clinton was effective, but the example that he ultimately left, I think for posterity, tragically, is going to begin with that single paragraph lead with the White House intern.
Joe Eszterhas
#11. A page is turning for me. I won't be candidate in legislative elections, nor in any elections to come.
Nicolas Sarkozy
#12. Term limits would cure both senility and seniority- both terrible legislative diseases.
Harry S. Truman
#13. All legislative experiments in the way of making forcible distribution of the wealth produced in any country have failed.
Leland Stanford
#14. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.
Samuel Adams
#15. Health care reform, the marquee legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration's first term, was passed before we entered the world of divided government.
Eliot Spitzer
#16. The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.
Edward Gibbon
#17. We have already given in example one effectual check to the dog of war by transferring the power of letting him loose from the Executive to the Legislative body
Thomas Jefferson
#18. Taking legislative authority away from the federal government doesn't necessarily mean freer individuals. It might just mean granting vastly more authority to the states
which already have far broader police powers than most of us would care to admit.
Dahlia Lithwick
#19. In every government there are three sorts of power: the legislative; the executive in respect to things dependent on the law of nations; and the executive in regard to matters that depend on the civil law.
Baron De Montesquieu
#20. Permission from the government is an expensive commodity. New ideas rarely have this kind of support. Old ideas often have deep legislative connections to defend them against the new.
Lawrence Lessig
#21. Every legislative limitation upon utterance, however valid, may in a particular case serve as an inroad upon the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects.
Stanley Forman Reed
#22. A cabinet is a combining committee, a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
Walter Bagehot
#23. Congress, the legislative stone in America's urethra.
Jon Stewart
#24. Clearly there are always unintended consequences of any legislative or regulatory act that's taken in the heat of battle.
Richard Grasso
#25. Question Period is not part of the legislative process,and has nothing to do with it. It is a means of monitoring the Executive that the Government cannot evade.
John Allen Fraser
#26. All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people.
James Burgh
#27. Last year, I was proud to be an original co-sponsor of legislation that would increase federal judges' salaries by more than 40 percent. It also built in a cost of living adjustment, so the Judicial Branch would not be dependent on the Legislative Branch for increases each year.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
#28. Students of American history will recall that the important place where work gets done in the legislative body, almost without exception, is in the committees, more so than on the floor although sometimes more attention is paid to the floor.
Paul Sarbanes
#29. 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.
J. Reuben Clark
#30. I have kept a steady focus on restoring public faith in our state government since taking office July 1. Now it is time to make even bigger and bolder gains through legislative action.
Jodi Rell
#31. If politics mean ... the effort to secure through legislative action better conditions of life for the people, greater opportunities for our children and other people's children ... then it most assuredly is a woman's job as much as it is a man's job.
Irene Parlby
#32. The U.S. has become a defacto one-party state, with the legislative branch permanently controlled by an incumbent's party and every president exploiting his role as Commander-in-Chief to expand on the imperial prerogatives of his office.
Andrew Bacevich
#33. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
James Madison
#34. That will change over time the entire flow of information and the entire quality of knowledge in the country and it will change the way people will try to play games in the legislative process.
Newt Gingrich
#35. You can't have the legislative and executive branch working in a parallel universe ... the partisanship that has gripped Washington has prevented us from dealing with the issues that this country needs to grapple with to determine its future.
Olympia Snowe
#36. A legislative entrepreneur ... doesn't just believe the right things. He's out there trying to make a good idea legislatively viable.
Matt Kibbe
#37. We could say that Romanian Onirisme was born from painting and not from surrealist literature. The visual is primordial. Dimov said, 'Dreams are not a source, but a canon, a legislative model.'
Dumitru Tepeneag
#38. My conviction of the necessity of further legislative provisions for the safe-keeping and disbursement of the public moneys and my opinion in regard to the measures best adapted to the accomplishment of those objects have been already submitted to you.
Martin Van Buren
#39. Monitor, transparently, and enforce the separation of Democracy powers: Legislative; Executive; Judicial
Miguel Reynolds Brandao
#40. The fact is, if our primary legislative goals are to repeal and replace the health spending bill; to end the bailouts; cut spending; and shrink the size and scope of government, the only way to do all these things it is to put someone in the White House who won't veto any of these things.
Mitch McConnell
#41. The constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.
John Marshall
#42. We are losing the war against cancer. The prohibition of new carcinogenic products, reduction of toxins in use, and right-to-know laws - these are among the legislative proposals which could reverse the cancer epidemic.
Samuel Epstein
#43. The more central problem of money in politics is something just as troubling but much harder to see: a system in which economic inequalities, inevitable in a free market economy, are transformed into political inequalities that affect both electoral and legislative outcomes.
Richard L. Hasen
#44. Women account for about 70% of Africa's food production and manage a large proportion of small enterprises. They are also increasingly represented in legislative and executive leadership positions.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
#45. Originalism is sort of subspecies of textualism. Textualism means you are governed by the text. That's the only thing that is relevant to your decision, not whether the outcome is desirable, not whether legislative history says this or that. But the text of the statute.
Antonin Scalia
#46. The Courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise will instead of judgement; the consequences would be the substitution of their pleasure for that of the legislative body.
Alexander Hamilton
#47. We're going to hammer guns on the anvil of relentless legislative strategy! We're going to beat guns into submission!
Charles Schumer
#48. By granting to the senators the privilege of being chosen for several years, and being renewed seriatim, the law takes care to preserve in the legislative body a nucleus of men already accustomed to public business, and capable of exercising a salutary influence upon the junior members.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#49. Is there a Legislative power in fact, not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, which might not, according to the doctrine of the Court, be exercised as a means of carrying into effect some specified Power?
James Madison
#50. As the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial departments of the United States are co-ordinate, and each equally bound to support the Constitution, it follows that each must in the exercise of its functions be guided by the text of the Constitution according to its own interpretation of it.
James Madison
#51. We have seen that the tendency of republican governments is to an aggrandizement of the legislative at the expense of the other departments. The appeals to the people, therefore, would usually be made by the executive and judiciary departments.
James Madison
#52. Section 1. All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.
Founding Fathers
#53. AMA report both confirmed the public health benefits of legal abortion and foresaw the public health danger of legislative attempts to turn back the clock on American women.
David A. Grimes, M.D.
#54. This bill is the legislative equivalent of crack. It yields a short-term high but does long-term damage to the system and it's expensive to boot.
Barney Frank
#55. Obama's endorsement of gay marriage is hardly as consequential as Johnson's legislative success on civil rights.
Robert Dallek
#56. I'm the only person that has ever run a principle-based legislative body.
Dan Webster
#57. While floor statements from today's [congressional] representatives are typically delivered to empty galleries and published into unread oblivion, legislative debates in the Reconstruction era were widely disseminated and closely observed.
Andrew Buttaro
#58. We mistake politics for legislative debate. You can be passionate without being personal.
Richard Dreyfuss
#59. I've been in the legislative branch and now the executive branch and in each case I felt it was important we use our constitutional responsibilities to the fullest.
John Engler
#60. Intervention for the prevention and control of osteoporosis should comprise a combination of legislative action, educational measures, health service activities, media coverage, and individual counselling to initiate changes in behaviour.
Gro Harlem Brundtland
#61. There can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society.
Warren E. Burger
#62. [W]ar is a question, under our constitution, not of Executive, but of Legislative cognizance. It belongs to Congress to say whether the Nation shall of choice dismiss the olive branch and unfurl the banners of War.
Alexander Hamilton
#63. A representative assembly, although extremely well qualified, and absolutely necessary, as a branch of the legislative, is unfit to exercise the executive power, for want of two essential properties, secrecy and dispatch.
John Adams
#64. The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense, is one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.
Alexander Hamilton
#65. It's really not a stretch. The checks and balances are the same. The drums are the executive branch. The jazz orchestra is the legislative branch. Logic and reason are like jazz solos. The bass player is the judicial branch. One our greatest ever is Milt Hinton, and his nickname is "The Judge."
Wynton Marsalis
#66. The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.
John Adams
#67. Legislative blocks are not always simply obstacles to be overcome.
Mariah Zeisberg
#68. The pornography of tough-mindedness, covert action, and preparedness for "peace through strength" has had a predictably hypnotic effect on the legislative branch, turning it from legal watchdog to lapdog.
Christopher Hitchens
#69. Global climate change is real. The legislative branch of our government is our last line of defense against pollution which is why I am so grateful to have the NRDC making our voice heard.
Kyra Sedgwick
#70. The power of protest depends not only on how many turn out, but also on what legislative, judicial, and civil society institutions exist to enact the will of those marching in the streets.
Cynthia P. Schneider
#71. The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached.
Woodrow Wilson
#72. In the politics of Jesus the world will be changed by non-coercive love or not at all. It's not the task of the church to change the world by legislative force. It's the task of the church to be the world changed by Christ. This is revolutionary in a way that conventional politics never can be.
Brian Zahnd
#73. Our legislative victory - an end to earmarks.
Rand Paul
#74. The military gave me structure and process. That reflects on the way I believe we should handle legislative matters. If we do it that way in any field, the results are usually better.
Ralph Abraham
#75. solutions are beyond the reach of the electoral process and legislative process.
Charles Murray
#76. In our system of government, the judicial and legislative branches have different roles. Judges are not politicians. Judges must decide cases, not champion causes. Judges must settle legal disputes, not pursue agendas. Judges must interpret and apply the law, not make the law.
Orrin Hatch
#77. No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.
Thomas Paine
#78. First, the American legislative process isn't well suited to large and complex measures.
George J. Mitchell
#79. Those who express random thoughts to legislative committees are often surprised and appalled to find themselves the instigators of law.
Mark B. Cohen
#80. The legislative powers of government reach actions only and not opinions.
Thomas Jefferson
#81. We need to work our level best in this legislative session to help grow Montana's economy, so that grandchildren can stay in Montana, grandchildren can visit their grandmother and grandfather by driving across town, not flying across the country.
Brian Schweitzer
#82. The class war had turned democracy into a contest in legislative looting.
Will Durant
#83. When we do not understand something, a common reaction is to fear it. In government, this is the usual, and encouraged, reaction. The reaction to the gig economy has been no different, and this growing fear has unfortunately turned into a legislative bloodbath.
John McAfee
#84. The very purpose of the Second Amendment is to stop the government from disallowing people the means to defend themselves against tyranny. Any proposal to abuse executive power and infringe upon gun rights must be repelled with the stiffest legislative force possible.
Steve Stockman
#85. The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.
Emma Goldman
#86. Market Anarchism is the doctrine that the legislative, adjudicative, and protective functions unjustly and inefficiently monopolised by the coercive State should be entirely turned over to the voluntary, consensual forces of market society.
Roderick T. Long
#87. The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.
James Madison
#88. Easy money, sudden fortunes, increasingly powerful political machines and blatant corruption transformed much of the nation; and the Senate, as befits a democratic legislative body, accurately represented the nation.
John F. Kennedy
#89. The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter.
Matthew Dowd
#90. Financial regulatory reform is one of the top legislative priorities of the Obama Administration.
Valerie Jarrett
#91. The United States furnishes the first example in history of a government deliberately depriving itself of all legislative control of religion.
Philip Schaff
#92. Statutory regulations, legislative enactments, constitutional provisions, are invasive. They never yet induced man to do anything he could and would not do by virtue of his intellect or temperament, nor prevented anything that man was impelled to do by the same dictates.
Emma Goldman
#93. I am mindful of the difference between the executive branch and the legislative branch. I assured all four of these leaders that I know the difference, and that difference is they pass the laws and I execute them.
George W. Bush
#94. Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Voltairine De Cleyre
#96. Intellectual freedom means the right to re-examine much that has been long taken for granted. A free man must be a reasoning man, and he must dare doubt what a legislative or electoral majority may most passionately assert.
Robert H. Jackson
#97. The parliament is the supreme decision-making and legislative body in any democracy. It reflects the collective desires of the citizens and makes laws.
Ziauddin Sardar
#98. Honorable, adj.: Afflicted with an impediment in one's reach. In legislative bodies, it is customary to mention all members as honorable; as, "the honorable gentleman is a scurvy cur.".
Ambrose Bierce
#99. Abstract propositions should never be discussed by a legislative body.
James Buchanan
#100. Democracy is not just constitutional and legislative rules; it is a culture and practice and adhering by the law and respecting international human rights principles.
Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa
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