Impeachment Quotes

• An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history.

  Gerald R. Ford

  House, Majority, Moments

  Remarks in House of Representatives, 15 Apr. 1970

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• Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs; its a method of removing someone whose continued presence in office would cause grave danger to the nation.

  Charles Ruff

  Office, Causes, Danger

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• The prosecution [of impeachments], will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community, and to divide it into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused. The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust, and they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Party, Passion, Men

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• No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice?

  George Mason

  Men, Justice, Should

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• I think the country could be spared a lot of agony and the government could worry about inflation and a lot of other problems if [Nixon would] go on and resign. [There is] no question that an admission of making false statements to government officials and interfering with the FBI and the CIA is an impeachable offense.

  William J. Clinton

  Country, Thinking, Government

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• I did not have sexual relations with that woman

  William J. Clinton

  Presidential, Relation, Political History

  Comment during remarks on after-school child-care initiative, 26 Jan. 1998

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• I think it absolutely necessary that the President should have the power of removing his subordinates from office; it will make him, in a peculiar manner, responsible for their conduct, and subject him to impeachment himself, if he suffers them to perpetrate with impunity high crimes or misdemeanors against the United States, or neglects to superintend their conduct, so as to check their excesses.

  James Madison

  Thinking, Should Have, Office

  James Madison (1904). “The Writings of James Madison: 1787-1790”

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• It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is.

  William J. Clinton

  Stupidity, Stupid Liberal, Perjury

  "Bill and Hillary Clinton: Will scandal ever stick to the Clintons?" by John Stossel, www.foxnews.com. May 07, 2015.

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• If there is ever a time that impeachment would be appropriate, this is certainly the time.

  Rocky Anderson

  Would Be, Appropriate, Ifs

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• The genius of impeachment lay in the fact that it could punish the man without punishing the office.

  Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

  Men, Office, Facts

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• When people ask if the United States can afford to place on trial the president, if the system can stand impeachment, my answer is, "Can we stand anything else?

  George McGovern

  Adversity, Men, America

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• How to check these unconstitutional invasions of rights by the Federal judiciary? Not by impeachment in the first instance, but by a strong protestation of both houses of Congress that such and such doctrines advanced by the Supreme Court are contrary to the Constitution; and if afterwards they relapse into the same heresies, impeach and set the whole adrift. For what was the government divided into three branches, but that each should watch over the others and oppose their usurpations?

  Thomas Jefferson

  Strong, Rights, Government

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• The slow-rising central horror of "Watergate" is not that it might grind down to the reluctant impeachment of a vengeful thug of a president whose entire political career has been a monument to the same kind of cheap shots and treachery he finally got nailed for, but that we might somehow fail to learn something from it.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Thug, Careers, Political

  Hunter S. Thompson (2012). “The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time”, p.242, Pan Macmillan

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• Experience has already shown that the impeachment the Constitution has provided is not even a scarecrow.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Political, President, Politics

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• Impeachment is the direct constitutional means for removing a President, Vice President or other civil officers of the United States who has acted or threatened acts that are serious offenses against the Constitution, its system of government, or the rule of law, or that are conventional crimes of such a serious nature that they would injure the Presidency if there was no removal.

  Ramsey Clark

  Mean, Government, Law

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• The Democrats had long labeled the impeachment debate a distraction from the urgent business of a great nation. But the Republicans argued that the pursuit of justice is the business of a great nation. In winning this point, they caught the falling flag, producing a triumph for the rule of law, a reassertion of the belief that no man is above it, and a rebuke for an arrogance that had grown imperial.

  Peggy Noonan

  Fall, Winning, Men

  "The Good Guys Finally Won" by Peggy Noonan, www.wsj.com. December 21, 1998.

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• The awful discretion, which a court of impeachments must necessarily have, to doom to honor or to infamy the most confidential and the most distinguished characters of the community, forbids the commitment of the trust to a small number of persons.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Character, Commitment, Small Numbers

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2003). “The Federalist: With Letters of Brutus”, p.319, Cambridge University Press

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• I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table.

  Nancy Pelosi

  Tables, Said, Never Trust Anyone

  "Pelosi: Bush Impeachment 'Off the Table'" by Susan Ferrechio, archive.nytimes.com. November 8, 2006.

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• The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Night, Government, Crow

  Letter to Charles Hammond, August 18, 1821.

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• Impeachment appears six times in the U.S. Constitution. The Founders weren't concerned with anything more than with impeachment because they had lived under King George III and had in 1776 accused the king of all the things that George W. Bush wants to do: Usurpation of the power of the people; Being above the law; Criminal abuse of authority.

  Ramsey Clark

  Kings, Law, People

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• Whether it's a sitting president when I was an impeachment manager, or a Republican president who has taken liberties with adherence to the law, to me the standard is the same.

  Bob Barr

  Taken, Law, President

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• The founding fathers gave the House of Representatives one function when it comes to cleansing the office of the presidency and that is impeachment, .. Whether or not a resolution of censure is appropriate is something beyond our constitutional authority.

  Henry Hyde

  Father, Office, House

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• If people wake up, think critically, and get angry, we get connected to that courage that the founding generation meant us to have. History shows when millions just don't go along, resist at any level - and I'm talking about all the way up to bipartisan impeachment and arrest of the leaders of the coup - then it can't happen.

  Naomi Wolf

  Thinking, Talking, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The risk is enormous to Democrats. Even talking about censure or impeachment threatens to really agitate the Republican base.

  Charlie Cook

  Talking, Risk, Agitation

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• Hillary Clinton, our junior senator from New York, announced that she has no intentions of ever, ever running for office of the President of the United States. Her husband, Bill Clinton, is bitterly disappointed. He is crushed. There go his dreams of becoming a two-impeachment family.

  David Letterman

  Running, Dream, New York

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