If the President does it, it can't be illegal.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that actions taken by those in power may be seen as justified or beyond scrutiny.
Richard M. Nixon's quote reflects a controversial perspective on the nature of legality and morality in leadership. It implies that the authority of the President can exempt actions from being judged as illegal, challenging the principles of accountability and justice. This notion raises ethical questions about the role of power and the boundaries of legal actions in governance.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of checks and balances within government systems.
The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity - is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.
The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.
The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle.
If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past.
I myself shall continue living in my glass house where you can always see who comes to call, where everything hanging from the the ceiling and on the walls stays where it is as if by magic, where I sleep nights in a glass bed, under glass sheets, where who I am will sooner or later appear etched by a diamond.
What is crucial to your survival as a race is not the redistribution of power and wealth within the prison but rather the destruction of the prison itself.
Women see better than men. Men see lazily, if they do not expect to act. Women see quite without any wish to act.
If we don't accept the uncomfortable proposition that every perpetrator of virtually every act of evil in our history has been a human being like us, then we actually foreclose the possibility of understanding how we do this to one another and therefore make it impossible to figure out how we might prevent these things.
We are a continent of refugees, and if you say we can't integrate refugees, that's not consistent with our values, even if borders cannot be wide open.
Outer beauty is inner beauty made visible, and it manifests itself in the light that flows in our eyes.
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