Quotes About Impeachment

“To those who will decide if he should be tried for 'high crimes and misdemeanors' -the House of Representatives-
And to those who would sit in judgment at such a trial if the House impeaches -the Senate-
And to the man who would preside at such an impeachment trial -the Chief Justice of the United States, Warren Burger-
And to the nation ...
The President said, 'I want you to know that I have no intention whatever of ever walking away from the job that the American people elected me to do for the people of the United States.'
- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward”

— Carl Bernstein

“In this passage we are taught how hateful a thing is calumny in all free States, as, indeed, in every society, and how we must neglect no means which may serve to check it. And there can be no more effectual means for checking calumny than by affording ample facilities for impeachment, which is as useful in a commonwealth as the other is pernicious. And between them there is this difference, that calumny needs neither witness, nor circumstantial proof to establish it, so that any man may be calumniated by any other; but not impeached; since impeachment demands that there be substantive charges made, and trustworthy evidence to support them.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

“But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that darkness?' asked Drinian.
Use?' replied Reepicheep. 'Use, Captain?' If you mean by filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as I have ever heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.”

— C.S. Lewis

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

— Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

“Clinton's egregious act of self-indulgence was outdone by an impeachment based not on constitutionally required high crimes and misdemeanors but on a vindictive determination to bring down a president who had offended self-righteous moralists eager to put a different political agenda in place.”

— Robert Dallek

“Without the tape-recorded evidence demonstrating irrefutably, in Nixon's own voice, his knowledge of and active involvement in obstruction of justice, it is likely that Nixon would have escaped impeachment and removal from office.”

— Richard Ben-Veniste

“It became evident to me that there was a very serious political element at work. I know that the term impeachment was bandied about. I do not believe, however, that the word was used with the ferocity it was more recently or that it was in the Nixon years.”

— Fred F. Fielding

“Ten of those Republican incumbents, all of whom voted for the impeachment of President Clinton, are from states that Bill Clinton carried.”

— Robert Torricelli

“That's the really neat thing about Dan Quayle, as you must have realized from the first moment you looked into those lovely blue eyes: impeachment insurance.”

— Barbara Ehrenreich

“There are certain things which are human nature," he asserted with an owl-like look, "which always have been and always will be, which can't be changed."
Amory looked from the small man to the big man helplessly. "Listen to that! That's what makes me discouraged with progress. Listen to that! I can name offhand over one hundred natural phenomena that have been changed by the will of man
a hundred instincts in man that have been wiped out or are now held in check by civilization. What this man here just said has been for thousands of years the last refuge of the associated mutton-heads of the world. It negates the efforts of every scientist, statesman, moralist, reformer, doctor, and philosopher that ever gave his life to humanity's service. It's a flat impeachment of all that's worth while in human nature. Every person over twenty-five years old who makes that statement in cold blood ought to be deprived of the franchise.”

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I am very proud of the role I played in getting legal equality for people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and in helping get rid of the prejudice by being visible about it, helping to block the conviction of Bill Clinton of impeachment.”

— Barney Frank

“Article II of the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon was just the simple fact that he talked about and suggested the potential use of the IRS against one or two political opponents.”

— Monica Crowley

“Mercedes nursed a special grievance - the grievance of sex. She was pretty and soft, and had been chivalrously treated all her days. But the present treatment by her husband and brother was everything save chivalrous. It was her custom to be helpless. They complained. Upon which impeachment of what to her was her most essential sex pregorative, she made their lives unendurable.”

— Jack London

“Impeachment is not a remedy for private wrongs; it's a method of removing someone whose continued presence in office would cause grave danger to the nation.”

— Charles Ruff

“The only conduct that merits the drastic remedy of impeachment is that which subverts our system of government or renders the president unfit or unable to govern.”

— Charles Ruff

“I am neither accusing President Obama of having committed high crimes and misdemeanors nor advocating his impeachment.”

— David Limbaugh

“Since losing his reelection in 2002, Barr has lost not only his power but also many of his friends. It doesn't help that after alienating nearly every Democrat with impeachment, he spent the next five years alienating his fellow Republicans - railing against the invasion of Iraq, the PATRIOT Act, and the Bush administration in general.”

— Wil S. Hylton

“Let's throw his ass out the airlock," suggested the Speaker of the House.
"We can't do that," said the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was a feeble old Mechanist who was subject to nosebleeds. "He is still Secretary of State and can't be sentenced without impeachment by the Senate."
The three Senators, two men and a woman, looked interested. The Senate didn't see much action in the government of the tiny Democracy. They were the least trusted members of the crew and were outnumbered by the House.”

— Bruce Sterling

“I'm drawn to almost any piece of writing with the words 'divine love' and 'impeachment' in the first sentence. But I know the word 'divine' makes many progressive people run screaming for their cute little lives, and so one hesitates to use it.”

— Anne Lamott

“In 2008, as a matter of fact, I had people accusing me of being a Senator Obama supporter because I wouldn't slam him. I said, 'Well, consider the fact that I voted for impeachment for President Clinton, but it wasn't a personal vote. I voted based on the facts and the law and the Constitution and what we were dealing with.'”

— J. C. Watts

“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

“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

“Anyone observing U.S. politics in recent years could easily conclude that lying about having sex is a serious offense worthy of impeachment, while lying about taking the country to war is hardly worth mentioning.”

— Linda McQuaig

“Their callous indifference to the plight of children streaming across the border, fleeing horrific circumstances in their own country. Republicans are simply strangled by extremism. There is no more establishment, or middle or moderate wing. You've got the Steve King wing of the Republican Party today, who raised the specter of impeachment this weekend.”

— Debbie Wasserman Schultz

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

— Rocky Anderson

“I think the first order of business after the vote on the articles of impeachment is censure.”

— John Breaux

“There are no term limits on His reign. He has always been King and He always will be King. There is no death that threatens the perpetuity of His sovereign authority. There is no usurping of power by a lesser rival to His throne. There are no coups, no revolutions (at least, none that succeed). There is no threat of impeachment. He is a King who rules eternally.”

— Sam Storms

“Opening our borders to a flood of illegal immigrants is deliberate ... It's time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment,”

— Sarah

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

— George Mason

“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

“There are many individual senators, including myself, who have said that, at an appropriate time after disposing of the impeachment matter, that an appropriate censure resolution that seems to me should be considered by the Congress.”

— Carl Levin

“You go out and obtain from your political allies and friends in the academic world to sign a letter saying that the offenses as alleged in the articles of impeachment do not rise to the level of an impeachable offense.”

— Charles Ruff

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

— Charlie Cook

“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

“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

“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

“She has slimmed down since the height of impeachment, her thick blow-dried hair as shiny as Russian sable and her creamy cleavage, as historic in its own way as Mount Rushmore, was quite wonderful to behold.”

— Monica Lewinsky

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

— Nancy Pelosi

“Life is more than thought: what a man feels, and what his senses awaken in him, are more indispensable to his life's fullness than subsequent reflection on their significance. Both Stirner and Nietzsche have elaborated Faust's opening speech in which he bemoans his wasted years in academia: this speech is Goethe's own impeachment of Kant and Hegel . Philosophy proceeds always under the risk of making a fetish of thinking.”

— John Carroll

“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

“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

“I think that in the minds of many, the press is being seen less and less as a neutral observer in the impeachment enterprise and more and more as participants, or even collaborators. On Media's Participation In Watergate”

— Pat Buchanan

“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

“The continual whine of lamenting the burden of taxes, however successfully it may be practiced in mixed governments, is inconsistent with the sense and spirit of a republic. If taxes are necessary, they are of course advantageous, but if they require an apology, the apology itself implies an impeachment. Why, then, is man imposed upon, or why does he impose upon himself?”

— Thomas Paine

“You feel kind of weird cheering for chaos. There is that sense that the crazier it gets, the better off we are. Before, when I was part of the American public, I was hoping for a reasonable and quick solution to the impeachment process. Now, I'm hoping for partisan bedlam and chaos. It's really what serves me best.”

— Jon Stewart

“Had I a careful and pleasant companion that should show me my angry face in a glass, I should not at all take it ill; to behold man's self so unnaturally disguised and dishonored will conduce not a little to the impeachment of anger.”

— Plutarch

“Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere.”

— William F. Buckley, Jr.

“I think the Republicans and conservatives generally were alienated by America's unsuccessful effort in Vietnam, and a lot of them, as Henry Kissinger admitted the other day, never got over President Nixon's impeachment, and didn't think, even though there was a pattern of illegal conduct there, sanctioned by the White House and proved by the tapes and other documentary evidence and testimony, they didn't believe that the impeachment was justified, and they didn't think he should have resigned.”

— William J. Clinton

“I own the soft impeachment.”

— Richard Brinsley Sheridan

“The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment.”

— Richard M. Nixon