Ours is a government of checks and balances. The Mafia and crooked businessmen make out checks, and the politicians and other compromised officials improve their bank balances. — Steve Allen
Those in power need checks and restraints lest they come to identify the common good for their own tastes and desires, and their continuation in office as essential to the preservation of the nation. — William O. Douglas
Power must never be trusted without a check. — John Adams
We need a return to transparency and a system of checks and balances, to a president who respects Congress' role of oversight and accountability. — Hillary Clinton
By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority. — John Roberts
Let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. — Simon Bolivar
The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Those who govern must see how the people react to administration. Ultimately, the people are the final arbiters. — Lal Bahadur Shastri
I believe Watergate shows that the system did work. Particularly the Judiciary and the Congress, and ultimately an independent prosecutor working in the Executive Branch. — Bob Woodward
. . . [The Judicial Branch] may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments. — Alexander Hamilton
The media is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democracy. It's not our job to cozy up to power. We're supposed to be the check and balance on government. — Amy Goodman
Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority. — Lord Acton
We can't have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint. — William Howard Taft
Our peculiar security is in the possession of a written Constitution. Let us not make it a blank paper by construction. — Thomas Jefferson
No man is wise enough, or good enough to be trusted with unlimited power. — Charles Caleb Colton
Being Balanced Quotes
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. — Carl Jung
Our lives will only ever always continue to be a balancing act that has less to do with pain and more to do with beauty. — Shane Koyczan
I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance. — Frank Zappa
Do more things that make you forget to check your phone.
Twenty seconds before a race, there's absolute focus. The key thing is to achieve relaxation, but at the same to have absolute total control. You've got to find the balance between being totally ready to go and being really at peace with yourself as well. — Cathy Freeman
As long as the mind and ego control the direction of creating, there will always be problems in the outer world, for the ego thinks only of itself and lives in duality. But when the heart is in control, everything comes back to balance, for the heart feels and knows only the oneness of life. — Drunvalo Melchizedek
The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology. — E. F. Schumacher
Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving
The realization of New Africa can only be possible by the African cultivating spiritual balance, which leads to the practicalization of social regeneration, to realizing economic determination, becoming mentally emancipated, and ushering in a political resurgence. — Nnamdi Azikiwe
As a profession, entrepreneurship breeds anything but balance. The highs can be stratospheric, and the lows can be crushing. — Lewis Howes
Although the patriarchal ego prides itself on being reasonable, the twentieth century has been anything but the Age of Reason. In our collective neurosis, we have raped the earth, disrupted the delicate balance of nature, and created phallic missiles of mass destruction. — Marion Woodman
I remember I used to half believe and wholly play with fairies when I was a child. What heaven can be more real than to retain the spirit-world of childhood, tempered and balanced by knowledge and common-sense... — Beatrix Potter
Patience is power. Patience is not an absence of action; rather it is "timing" it waits on the right time to act, for the right principles and in the right way. — Fulton J. Sheen
Balance, never let success go to your head, and never let failure go to your heart.
The richest and fullest lives attempt to achieve an inner balance between three realms: work, love and play. — Erik Erikson
We all need to get the balance right between action and reflection. With so many distractions, it is easy to forget to pause and take stock. — Queen Elizabeth II
A few well-designed movements, properly performed in a balanced sequence, are worth hours of doing sloppy calisthenics or forced contortion. — Joseph Pilates
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. — Albert Einstein
Existence is movement. Action is movement. Existence is defined by the rhythm of forces in natural balance. (...) It is our appreciation for dance that allows us to see clearly the rhythms of nature and to take natural rhythm to a plane of well-organised art and culture. — Rudolf von Laban
Every man should view himself as equally balanced: half good and half evil. Likewise, he should see the entire world as half good and half evil.... With a single good deed he will tip the scales for himself, and for the entire world, to the side of good. — Maimonides
The final mystery is oneself. When one has weighed the sun in the balance, and measured the steps of the moon, and mapped out the seven heavens star by star, there still remains oneself. Who can calculate the orbit of his own soul? — Oscar Wilde
Check Quotes
If you find someone who makes you smile, who checks up on you often to see if you're okay. Who watches out or you and wants the best for you. Who loves and respects you. Don't let them go. People like that are hard to find. — Franz Kafka
If you form the habit of taking what someone else says about a thing without checking it out for yourself, you'll find that other people will have you hating your friends and loving your enemies. — Malcolm X
Some believe it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay small acts of kindness and love. — Peter Jackson
Balance is not something you find. It's something you create.
Integrity is the value we set on ourselves. It is a fulfillment of the duty we owe ourselves. An honorable man or woman will personally commit to live up to certain self-imposed expectations. They need no outside check or control. They are honorable in their inner core. — James E. Faust
If you wish to check how much you love Allah, then see how much your heart loves the Quran, and you will know the answer. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya
The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Women's Rights'. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself. — Queen Victoria
Balance is key in life.
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it's in my basement... let me go upstairs and check. — M. C. Escher
Have Tottenham closed the gap on Arsenal?
Last time I checked they were still 4 miles and 11 titles away — Arsene Wenger
The ocean is like a checking account where everybody withdraws but nobody makes a deposit. This is what's happening because of overfishing. — Enric Sala
I finally had my prostate checked. And I was super-thankful that I taught my asshole to whistle before the doctor stuck his finger in there. The look on his face was priceless. — Ryan Reynolds
Check Yourself Quotes
Check yourself before you wreck yourself. — Meg Cabot
Girl, you better check yourself before you wreck yourself! — Glenn Beck
We all get stuck. We all lose ourselves a little bit in a fantasy or in our jobs and forget how we feel about other things. It's really important to check yourself, to spend some time alone. — Amanda Seyfried
A wise woman recognizes when her life is out of balance and summons the courage to act to correct it.
That's when the great stuff happens, when you're not checking yourself all the time, being critical of yourself and what other people are doing. — Carol Kane
Charity is just writing checks and not being engaged. Philanthropy, to me, is being engaged, not only with your resources but getting people and yourself really involved and doing things that haven't been done before. — Eli Broad
Your true friends dont shy away from keeping you in check because your wellbeing is more important to them than even your friendship and they'd rather risk offending you than watch you harm yourself. — Omar Suleiman
We stopped checking for monsters under the bed, when we realized they were inside of us
I have no idea whether I am completely sane. I don't think anybody is. I see the world through my eyes. It's sometimes a strange world. I hope I don't hurt people. You hope not to hurt yourself too much, either. Maybe that's the definition of keeping yourself in check? — Keira Knightley
It's always been most important for me to figure out "my space" rather than trying to check out what everyone else is up to, minute by minute. Technology is making it easier to connect to other people, but maybe harder to keep connected to yourself-- and that's essential for any artist, I think. — Jay-Z
If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you've got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that. — Dwayne Johnson
When I grew up, shame was used as a tool for check and balance. If you stood a chance of hearing someone say, "Shame on you," or "You should be ashamed of yourself," you thought twice. It doesn't seem to be a factor today. — Robert Redford
Journalism is the only profession explicitly protected by the U.S. Constitution, because journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on government. We're supposed to be holding those in power accountable. We're not supposed to be their megaphone. That's what the corporate media have become. — Amy Goodman
Power is the great evil with which we are contending. We have divided power between three branches of government and erected checks and balances to prevent abuse of power. However, where is the check on the power of the judiciary? If we fail to check the power of the judiciary, I predict that we will eventually live under judicial tyranny. — Patrick Henry
Life is like riding a bicycle, to keep your balance you must keep moving
When we can drain the Ocean into mill-ponds, and bottle up the Force of Gravity, to be sold by retail, in gas jars; then may we hope to comprehend the infinitudes of man's soul under formulas of Profit and Loss; and rule over this too, as over a patent engine, by checks, and valves, and balances. — Thomas Carlyle
An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others. — Thomas Jefferson
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go .
My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That's how I see business: great things in business are never done by one person, they're done by a team of people. — Steve Jobs
There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself. — Daniel Inouye
We needed someone to recognize the importance of check and balances, accountability, transparency. There was a real systemic problem at South Carolina State, a problem that has gone on for 25 or 30 years — Gwen Ifill
The basic premise of the Constitution was a separation of powers and a system of checks and balances because man was perceived as a fallen creature and would always yearn for more power. — Roy Moore
We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum. — Charles Schumer
Classical virtuosity is more than technique, line, proportion, and balance. It is as if the performer and spectator come together to hold in their hands a bird with a broken wing. The creature can be felt to stir, to struggle for freedom. Its life responds to human warmth; its wing might brush your check as it flies away. — Gelsey Kirkland
I think if you look at the statistics and you deal with fake media - and fake media and distorted media is a continuum - the vast majority of the population says, "I don't know what to believe." There are no checks and balances in quality control. — Ray Dalio
There are no checks and balances if the gov is wrong. If a private entrepreneur makes a mistake, he goes bankrupt, the losses are cut; if he bets wrong, he loses; if the gov bets wrong, they just get bigger, they just appropriate more money. It's a bottomless pit, because they either get it from the tax payers or run it off a printing press. — Peter Schiff
I think umpires have too much power, without any system of checks and balances and the more money a player makes, the more the umpire tries to show off that power to him. Unfortunately, since I signed my contract my strike zone has suddenly become a lot larger. — Ozzie Smith
Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers. — Todd Tiahrt
In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.' — William Safire
If the Republicans get control back of the United States Senate, we will no longer have a check and balance on the White House, on the Republican Congress. — Patty Murray
The gut-check message is do we have the right balance in our culture? Or are we in a position where hero worship and winning at all costs has subordinated our core values? — Mark Emmert
Nature has introduced great variety into the landscape, but man has displayed a passion for simplifying it. Thus he undoes the built-in checks and balances by which nature holds the species within bounds. — Rachel
I think taking vacations and turning off the phone and only doing emails or social media for a specific short amount of time helps with work/life balance. If I'm checking it all day I start to feel cuckoo-bird. So I just do it once or twice a day instead of a thousand. And then remembering that it doesn't matter. It just doesn't matter. — Maria Bamford
[Magna Carta provided] "a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool. — Winston Churchill
Expect Nature to answer to your human values as to come into your house and sit in a chair. The economy of nature, its checks and balances, its measurements of competing life - all this is its great marvel and has an ethic of its own. — Henry Beston
We must have systems of checks and balances to make sure that those people who are making critical decisions for our country are held accountable, and nowhere is that more important than in the area of national security. — Chris Van Hollen
'Checks are coming in the mail regularly'... or change your bank statement to whatever balance you want in there... and get behind the feeling of having it. — Rhonda Byrne
Under the president's spying program, there are no checks and balances. There is no outside review of the legality of this brazen infringement on the civil rights and liberties of the American people. Undeterred by the public outcry, the president [George Bush] vows to continue spying on American citizens. — Samuel Alito
This is a time when the protections of Americans' liberties are directly at risk, as are the checks and balances that have served to constrain abuses of power for more than 200 years. The Supreme Court is relied upon by all of to us protect our fundamental rights. — Patrick Leahy
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
That's the fundamental question. Do we have a check and balance system? Do we have three equal branches or do we have one supreme branch, not just the Supreme Court? That's the fundamental question. — Mike Huckabee
Much of the world today, including the United States, is still living in the social, cultural, and political aftermath of Britain's cultural achievements, its industrial revolution, its government of checks and balances, and its conquests around the world. — Thomas Sowell
I like work/life separation, not work/life balance. What I mean by that is, if I'm on, I want to be on and maximally productive. If I'm off, I don't want to think about work. When people strive for work/life balance, they end up blending them. That's how you end up checking email all day Saturday. — Tim Ferriss
The checks and balances is a way to prevent government from either devolving into an autocratic tyranny or an autocratic mob mentality. — Beau Willimon
The threat to change Senate rules is a raw abuse of power and will destroy the very checks and balances our founding fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government. — Harry Reid
Suddenly, we humans - a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature - have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power. — Paul MacCready
There are certain people within the new government who have a slightly disturbing tendency toward authoritarianism, but there are so many checks and balances that in that way their noises are just noises. — Jonathan Shapiro
I think we're probably more unified than ever before because we're in a battle for survival. Not only for survival as the Republican Party, but survival of the check and balance system in our government. — Bill Scott
In summary, the Romans were opposed to tyranny in any form; and the feature of government to which they gave the most thought was an elaborate system of checks and balances. — Robert Welch
If you're getting different prescriptions from different doctors, there has to be some sort of check and balance in there somewhere. — Nikki Sixx
My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each others' negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. — Steve Jobs
I think what happened is, we have gotten a little careless maybe and sloppy over the last 10 years with the mechanisms that used to provide oversight, checks and balances, a safety net, if you will, for professionalism. — Martin Dempsey
I can't speak for all Iranians, but I think that many of them would be uncomfortable with Ahmadinejad if Iran had nuclear weapons and he had his finger on the button. But the reality is that Iran's system of government is actually very complex. It has a lot of checks and balances, and neither Ahmadinejad nor any Iranian president would ever have his finger on the button. There are too many people involved in a decision of that magnitude. — Hooman Majd
The bureaucratic nature of both capitalism and our government assures us that there are no checks and balances when it comes to justifying any and all behavior that either makes money and secures the supposed peace of the nation-state. — Tripp York
Do I think that American democracy ends if Trump is president? No! I think, there are plenty of checks and balances in place. I think he would do some damage to the country but we would recover. The office of the presidency and American democratic institutions are a lot stronger than one person. So if he wins, our job is just to keep the office strong, right? And hope he'll be replaced by something better! — Malcolm Gladwell
In Conclusion
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