A Quote by Benjamin Wittes

The nature of constitutional delegations of power is that they entitle the empowered official to do certain things that other people can't do. — © Benjamin Wittes
The nature of constitutional delegations of power is that they entitle the empowered official to do certain things that other people can't do.
The Internet has empowered us. It has empowered you, it has empowered me, and it has empowered some other guys as well.
A certain number of people seek power over other people in a desperate attempt to find themselves. They fail, for self-discovery is spiritual in nature, not social or political. Authoritatively telling other people what to do is their distraction from an inner emptiness they can never fill.
Power corresponds to the human ability not just to act but to act in concert. Power is never the property of an individual; it belongs to a group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together. When we say of somebody that he is 'in power' we actually refer to his being empowered by a certain number of people to act in their name. The moment the group, from which the power originated to begin with ... disappears, 'his power' also vanishes.
People are hypocritical. That's just human nature. I embrace my hypocrisy. Once you come to grips with who you are and what's in you, and you aren't ashamed of it...but people are made to feel ashamed. You start thinking, like, "Is this human nature? That I like certain things, but I don't like certain aspects of certain things? Should I just shun it altogether?"
In a certain sense, and to a certain extent, he [the president] is the representative of the people. He is elected by them, as well as congress is. But can he, in the nature [of] things, know the wants of the people, as well as three hundred other men, coming from all the various localities of the nation? If so, where is the propriety of having a congress?
Relative to the power that movie stars have, and producers and directors, I would say that even the most respected screenwriters have very little power in Hollywood. I don't think it's in the nature of the writer's profession to go after that power. Writers spend their time alone, hallucinating, writing, making these things up, while these other people are out schmoozing, making connections, meeting each other. They are trotting the corridors of power and making sure they've put their own imprints in it. And they're promoting themselves and their images, as they should.
Darwinism is under official protection throughout the world. No other ideology in history, no other idea, has ever been kept under such strict official protection. To make any kind of statement criticizing Darwinism causes an official reaction.
Official education was telling people almost nothing of the nature of all those things on the seashores, and in the redwood forests, in the deserts and in the plains.
The superior man does not mind being in office; all he minds about is whether he has qualities that entitle him to office. He does not mind failing to get recognition; he is too busy doing the things that entitle him to recognition.
If possessing a higher degree of intelligence does not entitle one human to use another for his or her own ends, how can it entitle humans to exploit non-humans?
When there is official censorship it is a sign that speech is serious. Where there is none, it is pretty certain that the official spokesmen have all the loud-speakers.
Even if we're not doing anything wrong, there are certain things we want to do that we don't think can withstand the scrutinizing eye of other people. And those are often the most important things that we do. The things we do when other people are watching are things that are conformist, obedient, normal, and unnotable.
If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act.
The emotional security and political stability in this country entitle us to be a nuclear power.
We ourselves introduce that order and regularity in the appearance which we entitle "nature". We could never find them in appearances had we not ourselves, by the nature of our own mind, originally set them there.
Friends are discovered rather than made; there are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don't know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music, and paintings are like the Freemason's sign, they reveal the initiated to each other.
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