Veto Quotes

I know what it was like to not have a voice, so my daughter has a voice. I veto that voice when needed because at the end of the day I am the grown-up, but I hear her. ~ Lorraine Toussaint

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision. ~ Barbara Jordan

I think men should be able to veto women's abortions if they're willing to care for the child after it's born. ~ Keith Ablow

A country outside the euro zone cannot have a veto over countries in the euro zone. ~ Francois Hollande

Say your husband wants to start a business creating topiary sculptures for clients. You think the idea is bonkers, but you admire his passion, so it seems cruel to veto it. Instead, set a tripwire. Okay, dear, let's give the topiary-sculpture business a shot, but can we agree that we won't invest more than $10,000 of our savings in it? Alternatively, you might say: Go for it, but if you don't have a paying customer within three months, let's talk seriously about Plan B. ~ Chip Heath

Ribbons a-flutter and orchids a-tremble, Yearly the vigilant Daughters assemble, Affirming in fervid and firm resolutions Their permanent veto on all revolutions. ~ Marya Mannes

Lets build a monument for the veto. Lets build a monument for impotence and incapacity. ~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

When it's not enough to veto your children's tendencies, you must in vitro them. ~ Bauvard

I appreciate the decision made by Gov. Brewer to veto this legislation. I hope that we can now move on from this controversy and assure the American people that everyone is welcome to live, work and enjoy our beautiful State of Arizona. ~ John McCain

Congress knew Coolidge would veto the farm bill. There was more politics than relief in that bill. ~ Will Rogers

In January 1924, as a sweeping immigration measure awaited presidential signature, American Jewish Committee leader Louis Marshall asked to meet with President Calvin Coolidge to urge a veto. Coolidge refused to see him. The president's views were summed up in an article he had written a few years earlier in Good Housekeeping magazine, titled "Whose Country Is This?" "[B]iological laws show us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races," Coolidge wrote. ~ J.J. Goldberg

Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes. ~ Don Tapscott

Overregulation stifles creativity. It smothers innovation. It gives dinosaurs a veto over the future. It wastes the extraordinary opportunity for a democratic creativity that digital technology enables. ~ Lawrence Lessig

By their own admission, leaders of the Republican Revolution of 1994 think their greatest mistake was overlooking the power of the veto. They gave the impression they were somehow in charge when they weren't. ~ Mitch McConnell

Every man has but one destiny Veto Corleone ~ Mario Puzo

Children in home-school conflict situations often receive a double message from their parents: "The school is the hope for your future, listen, be good and learn" and "the school is your enemy ... " Children who receive the "school is the enemy" message often go after the enemy
act up, undermine the teacher, undermine the school program, or otherwise exercise their veto power. ~ James P. Comer

The U.S. - the idea that the U.S. has introduced and imposed principles of international law, that's hardly even a joke. The United States has even gone so far as to veto Security Council resolutions calling on all states to observe international law. That was in the 1980s under Reagan. ~ Noam Chomsky

The United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. ~ Nelson Mandela

When every ethnic and religious group claims a right to approve or veto anything that is taught in public schools, cultural pluralism becomes ethnocentrism. An evident casualty is the old idea that whatever our ethnic base, we are all Americans together. ~ Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.

The world peace stays a dream and is impossible that until the veto power holders become unable to practice veto-dragon since that causes injustice, wars, and destruction. ~ Ehsan Sehgal

I will veto any tax increase. ~ Susana Martinez

The abuse of the veto power has become so predictable that frequently resolutions are not even tabled because of the certainty of a veto against their adoption. Necessary discussion is thereby suppressed. Concerted action by the Security Council, the General Assembly and other United Nations agencies is necessary to prevent major human rights violations, stop ongoing breaches and provide remedies to victims. ~ Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how to solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government. ~ Scott Brown

The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven. ~ C.S. Lewis

This patchwork approach to problem solving leads to what Steven Teles of Johns Hopkins University calls "kludgeocracy". Mr Teles compares the government's veto points to toll booths, with the toll-takers extracting promises of pork-barrel spending and the protection of favoured programmes in exchange for passage. Needing the approval of so many, often ideologically opposed actors makes it almost impossible to craft coherent policy. Inaction is often the result, but also the creation over time of confusing systems for education, health care, taxes, welfare, ~ Anonymous

The bill's a textbook example of special interest pork barrel politics at work, and I have no choice but to veto it. ~ Ronald Reagan

I've made a commitment that any tax increase, I'm going to veto. It's the worst thing we could do. We have an amount of money to spend. That's it. ~ Brian Sandoval

I very early caught on that the editor of Cincinnati Post had something specific in mind that he was looking for, and I tried to accommodate him in order to get published. I would turn out rough idea after rough idea, and he would veto eighty percent of them. I pretty much prostituted myself for six months but I couldn't please him, so he sent me packing. ~ Bill Watterson

Giving Northern Europe a veto over Southern Europe's budgets will not hold a monetary union together. The euro zone will continue to need the weaker countries to stomach decades of high unemployment to grind down wages. ~ Austan Goolsbee

Why didn't the Democrats accomplish more right after the 2006 elections that gave them control of Congress? It wasn't just that they didn't have votes to override a presidential veto or block a filibuster. They didn't use their mandate to substantially change how the public--and the media-- thought about issues. They just tried to be rational, to devise programs to fit people's interests and the polls. Because there was little understanding of the brain, there was no campaign to change brains. Indeed, the very idea of "changing brains" sounds a little sinister to progressives-- a kind of Frankenstein image comes to mind. It sounds Machiavellian to liberals, like what the Republicans do. But "changing minds" in any deep way always requires changing brains. Once you understand a bit more about how brains work, you will understand that politics is very much about changing brains-- and that it can be highly moral and not the least bit sinister or underhanded. ~ George Lakoff

Now that we have the line-item veto there is no excuse for Congress to put pork in and no reason for the president not to line-item veto it out. ~ John McCain

My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. ~ Winston Churchill

I will veto any effort to get rid of those automatic spending cuts to domestic and defense spending. There will be no easy off ramps on this one. ~ Barack Obama

You got to have a courageous president to stand up and says, listen, if - if you send a bill to me that spends more money than what we've coming in, I'll veto it. I mean, I'm going to try to work with you the best I can, but I'm going to veto it. ~ Rick Perry

The first pork-barrel bill that crosses my desk, I'm going to veto it and make the authors of those pork-barrel items famous all over America. ~ John McCain

I'm obviously younger, much better looking [then Jeorge W.Bush].He didn't veto things, he didn't bring order and fiscal restraint. ~ Stephen Colbert

I will veto every single beer, um, bill with earmarks. ~ John McCain

To restrict or legalize abortion, to allow or forbid gay marriage, a legislator would need to write and pass a law, get it signed by the president or a governor, and perhaps override a veto. A Supreme Court justice need only persuade four other people. If he or she is not internally constrained by the authority of a text, he or she is not constrained. ~ Michael J. Gerson

Today, the most important political instrument in the hands of the opposition is the presidential veto. ~ Donald Tusk

If the president signs any of it, good. If he vetoes, it will be clarifying. Who then will be the party of no? The vetoed legislation would become the framework for a 2016 GOP platform. Let the debate begin. ~ Charles Krauthammer

It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals. ~ Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Parents and other who complain often do so out of deep beliefs or convictions, and often in an effort to "protect" young people from influences they believe are harmful. Of course, no one wants to subject students to harmful influences. But given the wide range of opinion, if everyone had the right to veto what he or she didn't like, nothing much would be left. ~ Joan Bertin

The power given by the Constitution to the Executive to interpose his veto is a high conservative power; but in my opinion it should never be exercised except in cases of clear violation of the Constitution, or manifest haste and want of due consideration by Congress. ~ Zachary Taylor

Scripture is our norming norm and tradition is our normed norm and that in a doctrinal controversy Scripture alone has absolute veto power while The Great Tradition (orthodox doctrine) has a vote but not a veto. ~ Roger E. Olson

While I always thought of making sequels to movies like 'Ghayal,' the filmmakers would almost always veto the idea. ~ Sunny Deol

I will never cede the authority of our country or our security to any other nation. I'll never give a veto over American security to any other entity - not a nation, not a country, not an institution. ~ John F. Kerry

I respect the Governor's position to veto SB1062, especially in light of the concerns brought up over the past week. I understand the concerns of people of good faith on all sides of this issue. ~ Andy Tobin

If you vote against act in the Senate, you would also veto it as president. ~ Marco Rubio

All of a sudden (in 1938 I think), in order to extend its autarchy to the domain of cinema, Italy decreed an embargo on American films. It wasn't a question of censorship: as usual the censors granted or denied permission to individual films, and nobody saw the ones that didn't get it and that was it. In spite of the awkward anti-Hollywood propaganda campaign that accompanied the measure (right around that time the regime began to conform to Hitler's racism), the true reason for the embargo was supposed to be commercial protectionism, in order to make room in the market for Italian (and German) productions. For this reason the four largest American production and distribution companies - Metro, Fox, Paramount, Warner - (I'm still relying on memory, trusting the accuracy of the registration of my trauma), whereas films by other American companies like RKO, Columbia, Universal, United Artists (which had also been distributed before then by Italian companies) continued to arrive until 1941, that is until Italy found itself at war with the United States. I was still granted some sporadic satisfaction (in fact, one of the greatest: Stagecoach [John Ford, 1939]) but my collector's voracity suffered a fatal blow.

Compared to all of the prohibitions and obligations that fascism had imposed on us, and to the even more severe ones that it continued to enforce in those years before and then during the war, the veto on American films was certainly a minor or small loss, and I ~ Italo Calvino

During the Bosnian war in the late 1990s, I spent several days traveling around the country with Susan Sontag and her son, my dear friend David Rieff. On one occasion, we made a special detour to the town of Zenica, where there was reported to be a serious infiltration of outside Muslim extremists: a charge that was often used to slander the Bosnian government of the time. We found very little evidence of that, but the community itself was much riven as between Muslim, Croat, and Serb. No faction was strong enough to predominate, each was strong enough to veto the other's candidate for the chairmanship of the city council. Eventually, and in a way that was characteristically Bosnian, all three parties called on one of the town's few Jews and asked him to assume the job. We called on him, and found that he was also the resident intellectual, with a natural gift for synthesizing matters. After we left him, Susan began to chortle in the car. 'What do you think?' she asked. 'Do you think that the only dentist and the only shrink in Zenica are Jewish also?' It would be dense to have pretended not to see her joke. ~ Christopher Hitchens

You cannot be a rational subject without veto-control on the level of mental action. ~ Thomas Metzinger

Who knew, in 2000, that 'compassionate conservatism' meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief? Who knew, in 2000, that the only bill the president would veto, six years later, would be one on funding stem-cell research? A more accurate term for Mr. Bush's political philosophy might be incontinent conservatism. ~ Christopher Buckley

Take the veto. Bush is the first president since James Garfield in 1881 not to veto a single bill. Garfield only had six months in office; Bush has had over four years. ~ Jim Cooper

I think there [are] great economies that can be made starting with a round of base closings, ... I want the president to veto these pork-barrel spending bills which have grown to incredible obscene levels. I believe there are a number of weapons systems that have to be eliminated. ~ John McCain

I will veto any spending bill that contains funding for Planned Parenthood, facilities that perform abortion and all government family planning schemes. ~ Ron Paul

To make a division of power effectual, a veto in one form or another is indispensable. The right of each to judge for itself of the extent of the power allotted to its share, and to protect itself in its exercise, is what, in reality, is meant by a division of power. ~ John C. Calhoun

There has been talk of lack of consensus, but we all know that this is the veto of foreign powers, the intolerable situation in our 21st century America. ~ Rafael Correa

Veto is like if you make big sandwich - careful and nice you make it - and I come over and eat sandwich. No question asked. This is how veto works. ~ Tom Rachman

She dug through the clothes packed in the trunk until she found the blue halter top and black jeans she had been wearing the night Veto died. She wasn't sure why she had saved them, but she was glad she had, now. She was going to wear them tonight in honor of Veto.
She carried them back to her room, stood in front of the mirror over her dresser, and slipped on the gold earrings that had been a gift from Veto. Then she started to dress. She rubbed glitter lotion over her arms and painted black lines on her eyelids. She rolled on her mascara, then stood back. ~ Lynne Ewing

We believe that the vote would have been close. We regret that in the face of an explicit threat to veto by a permanent member, the vote-counting became a secondary consideration. ~ John Negroponte

People in heaven will not be denied the privilege of enjoying their life just because they're consciously aware of hell. If they couldn't, then hell would have veto power over heaven. ~ J.P. Moreland

Candor is entirely in order: only the most devilish anti-American, after all, could question our right to act as suits our fancy. If, say, we choose to invade some defenseless country to capture one of our agents who no longer follows orders, and then try him for crimes committed while on our payroll, who could question the majesty of our system of justice? True, the UN did, but our veto took care of that childish tantrum. ~ Noam Chomsky

the American system of checks and balances disperses federal lawmaking authority among multiple, overlapping political forums. As a result, federal policymaking power is shared: Congress is given the primary power to draft laws, subject to the president's veto and judicial review; the executive branch is given the primary power to implement laws, subject to congressional oversight and judicial review; and the courts have the primary power to interpret laws, subject to a variety of legislative and executive checks, including the appointment process, budgetary powers, and the passage of "overrides"-laws that explicitly reverse or materially modify existing judicial interpretations of statutes. ~ Mark C. Miller

The modern mind is like the eye of a man who is too tired to see the difference between blue and green. It fails in the quality that is truly called distinction; and,being incapable of distinction, it falls back on generalisation. The man, instead of having the sense to say he is tired, says he is emancipated and enlightened and liberal and universal....

...we find it less trouble to let in a jungle of generalisations than to keep watch upon a logical frontier. But this shapeless assimilation is not only found in accepting things in the lump; it is also found in condemning them in the lump. When the same modern mind does begin to be intolerant, it is just as universally intolerant as it was universally tolerant. It sends things in batches to the gallows just as it admitted them in mobs to the sanctuary. It cannot limit its limitations any more than its license....There are...lunatics now having power to lay down the law, who have somehow got it into their heads that any artistic representation of anything wicked must be forbidden as encouraging wickedness. This would obviously be a veto on any tragedy and practically on any tale. But a moment's thought...would show them that this is simply an illogical generalisation from the particular problem of sex. All dignified civilisations conceal sexual things, for the perfectly sensible reason that their mere exhibition does affect the passions. But seeing another man forge a cheque does not make me want to forge a cheque. ~ G.K. Chesterton

To demand of the loveless and the self-imprisioned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven ... Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves. I know it has a grand sound to say ye'll accept no salvation which leaves one creature in the dark outside. But watch the sophistry or ye'll make a Dog in the Manger the tyrant of the universe. ~ C.S. Lewis

This must surely be one of the most astounding documents ever presented to an Ally when engaged in a life and death struggle. For it imposed what was really a veto on the best opportunity of cutting the common enemy's life-line and of protecting our own." By acquiescing to such an outrage, Liddell Hart contended, the British General Staff were essentially "accessories to the crime," that crime being that the British in Egypt had now been given no alternative but to await another assault on the Suez Canal, and to then launch their own attack against the very strongest point of the Turkish line - the narrow front of southern Palestine - an approach that was to ultimately cost them fifty thousand more casualties. ~ Scott Anderson

The news today that Bush has vowed to veto any legislation that reviews the security implications of the Dubai Port World's potential management of our ports is ludicrous and the entire Democratic Party is calling him to task for it. ~ John Conyers