Quotes About Government

What is so bad about big government? My indictment of big government is that it is bad because it attacks liberty, prosperity, progress, harmony, and morality. Thanks to big government, we have significantly less of all of those good things than we would if we had been able to keep government right-sized. Big government is cancerous. Like a cancer, it hurts the body and tends to spread, doing more and more harm as it grows. It is time for some radical surgery.

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

In the event of any action which clearly threatened Polish independence and which the Polish Government accordingly considered it vital to resist with their national forces, His Majesty's Government would feel themselves bound at once to lend the Polish Government all support in their power. They have given the Polish Government an assurance to this effect. I may add that the French Government have authorized me to make it plain that they stand in the same position in this matter.

If, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by today's standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that today's liberals would not accept now that government has become so overgrown.

We insist on producing a farm surplus, but think the government should find a profitable market for it. We overindulge in speculation, but ask the government to prevent panics. Now the only way to hold the government entirely responsible for conditions is to give up our liberty for a dictatorship. If we continue the more reasonable practice of managing our own affairs we must bear the burdens of our own mistakes. A free people cannot shift their responsibility for them to the government. Self-government means self-reliance.

A famous, very often quoted phrase says: "That government is best, which governs least." I do not believe this to be a correct description of of the functions of a good government. Government ought to do all the things for which it is needed and for which it is established. Government ought to protect the individuals within the country against the violent and fraudulent attacks of gangsters, and it should defend the country against foreign enemies. These are the functions of government within a free system, within the system of the market economy.

I believe it is in the national interest that government stand side-by-side with people of faith who work to change lives for the better. I understand in the past, some in government have said government cannot stand side-by-side with people of faith. Let me put it more bluntly, government can't spend money on religious programs simply because there's a rabbi on the board, cross on the wall, or a crescent on the door. I viewed this as not only bad social policy - because policy by-passed the great works of compassion and healing that take place - I viewed it as discrimination.

If the U.S. Government was a company, the deficit would be $5 trillion because they would have to account by general accepted accounting principles. But actually they encourage government spending, reckless government spending, because the government can issue Treasury bills at extremely low interest rates.

When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished.... When financial meltdowns occur, the public's outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I don't believe in government. I hate politics. I'm against it. And I hope that sometime this fall, we can destroy part of our government, and next year destroy even more of it. The less government, the happier I will be.

We need to have mentoring programs energized by government, paid for by government, but who exist not because of government. Teen Challenge is a way to get people off drugs and alcohol. Teen Challenge is a faith-based program that changes people's hearts.

[For business after WWII ] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that's robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government.

But you're never taught in schools - we don't teach anyone in public schools that government is the problem. We don't teach anyone in college that government is the problem - except maybe a handful of sort of unique, conservative schools. But mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem.

I have long been in favor of a balanced budget restriction at the level of the federal government of the United States. Because the federal government has money-creating powers it can, in fact, be very damaging if it runs a series of budget deficits. With the state government in the United States, they don't have money-creating powers. The automatic discipline imposed by the fact that they are in a common monetary unit and don't have control over the money power means that the balanced budget restriction is less needed.

We must, therefore, emphasize that 'we' are not the government; the government is not 'us.' The government does not in any accurate sense 'represent' the majority of the people. But, even if it did, even if 70 percent of the people decided to murder the remaining 30 percent, this would still be murder and would not be voluntary suicide on the part of the slaughtered minority. No organicist metaphor, no irrelevant bromide that 'we are all part of one another,' must be permitted to obscure this basic fact.

The reason this country continues its drift toward socialism and big nanny government is because too many people vote in the expectation of getting something for nothing, not because they have a concern for what is good for the country. A better educated electorate might change the reason many persons vote. If children were forced to learn about the Constitution, about how government works, about how this nation came into being, about taxes and about how government forever threatens the cause of liberty perhaps we wouldn't see so many foolish ideas coming out of the mouths of silly old men.

A government is a compulsory territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making (jurisdiction) and, implied in this, a compulsory territorial monopolist of taxation. That is, a government is the ultimate arbiter, for the inhabitants of a given territory, regarding what is just and what is not, and it can determine unilaterally, i.e., without requiring the consent of those seeking justice or arbitration, the price that justice-seekers must pay to the government for providing this service.

I get so ticked off at you intellectually lazy people who think that the government is God, that every dollar they get or spend is somehow sacred. There is more fraud and waste and misuse. If the federal government were held accountable to the law as corporations are held accountable, half the federal government would be in prison.

No matter what happens in the future, whether it is a Labor government or a Coalition government, whoever is in government is going to have to fix the budget.

Shocked to learn of the serious attacks against certain areas in New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, which caused horrendous casualty, I wish to express, on behalf of the Chinese Government and people, our deepest sympathy and solicitude to you and, through you, to the Government and people of the United States. I wish also to extend our condolences to the families of the victims. The Chinese Government has consistently condemned and rejected all forms of terrorist violence.

It wasn't government that gave us nearly 50 million uninsured Americans and denials for pre-existing conditions. It wasn't government that gave us the yearly and lifetime caps on insurance coverage that have sent so many people into bankruptcy when they've faced a serious illness or accident... It wasn't government that gave us a system in which the gap between what we spend and what we get is so enormous. It was the free market.

National sovereignty is an obligation as well as an entitlement. A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government.

There is nothing wrong with describing Conservatism as protecting the Constitution, protecting all things that limit government. Government is the enemy of liberty. Government should be very restrained.

I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war on liberty, and that the democratic government is at least as bad as any of the other forms.

When I've gotten criticism, it's that it's too long, too soft, didn't hit the government hard enough. Then when I do hit the government, they go, What's he doing hitting the government?

I'd love to have a president who really was out there leading and traveling around the world campaigning for joint climate change action. Even the Chinese government is trying to get people to stop polluting. And I think the federal government level in China is acting more responsibly than the American government.

There is one view of the subject which ought to have its influence on those who espouse doctrines which strike at the authoritative origin and efficacious operation of the Government of the United States. The Government of the U.S. like all Governments free in their principles, rests on compact; a compact, not between the Government & the parties who formed & live under it; but among the parties themselves, and the strongest of Governments are those in which the compacts were most fairly formed and most faithfully executed.

How can you have the mess we have in New Orleans, and not have had deep investigations of the federal government, the state government, the city government, and the failure of citizenship in the Ninth Ward, where 22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane.

One of the tax systems in the US is for wage earners. The government takes money from them out of each paycheck - so it knows how much they make, and those workers can't cheat to any significant degree. But the other tax system is for capital. Those with capital get to tell the government what they want to tell. They may get audited, but if their tax returns are of any size the government doesn't have enough of the smart auditors to figure out what's really going on. And there are the rules that allow you to do things like take in money today and pay taxes on it thirty years from now.

I think that people who believe in limited government would benefit greatly by studying the logic in government itself and the role of power as a corruptive mechanism in leading finally to unlimited government.

As a conservative who believes in limited government, I believe the only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press. A free press ensures the flow of information to the public, and let me say, during a time when the role of government in our lives and in our enterprises seems to grow every day--both at home and abroad - ensuring the vitality of a free and independent press is more important than ever.

Government! Three-fourths parasitic and the rest stupid fumbling - oh, Harshaw concluded that man, a social animal, could not avoid government, any more than an individual could escape bondage to his bowels. But simply because an evil was inescapable was no reason to term it "good." He wished that government would wander off and get lost! (96)

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other.

In addition to their power over government based on government financing and personal influence, bankers could steer governments in ways they wished them to go by other pressures.

When a government betrays the people by amassing too much power and becoming tyrannical, the people have no choice but to exercise their original right of self-defense — to fight the government.

We've got the government shutdown, but the beginning of Obamacare. You know what that means? You can now complain to your doctor about the government making you sick.

Everyone on the Commission assumes that 9/11 resulted from a lack of government action. No one in Washington has raised the question of whether our shortcomings, brought to light by 9/11, could have been a result of too much government.

Efficiency in government is a more elusive concept than efficiency in the private economy, which may be measured relatively easily as output per units of input. What is the government's 'output?'

In a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.

Temporary nationalization of the banks that are in very bad shape would mean basically that the government is the temporary owner. I always believe that the government should focus on its comparative advantages, and banking is not one of them. It should, therefore, if it nationalizes banks, sell them back to the private sector.

A union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion.

If we can return to a government that the Founders, in their wisdom, envisioned for us, we can return to a government that will allow our economy to thrive again, and our people to live in liberty.

There's huge opportunities to continue to improve efficiency in the way the government operates and improve the way government provides services to its citizens.

Americans complain a lot about the government and they voice a generalized suspicion of the government, but they constantly clammer for more of it.

The economical policies that are instigated really makes you think that the American government is a bunch of evil bastards. So just because you're black, you're still representing that government, and when Obama came into office he enacted the same policies that we would critique other presidents for.

A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

We're just trying to end illegitimate government support for a single technology, which is un-American. We should be leading the world in the next generation of technological innovation. But we can't unleash private capital because of what the government is doing to stifle innovation and to choke competition.

Welfare policies never attain those - allegedly beneficial - ends which the government and the self-styled progressives who advocated them wanted to attain, but - on the contrary - bring about a state of affairs which - from the very point of view of the government and its supporters - is even more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they wanted to 'improve.'