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.

Year after year in Washington, budget debates seem to come down to an old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need....Government has a role, and an important role. Yet, too much government crowds out initiative and hard work, private charity and the private economy....Government should be active, but limited; engaged, but not overbearing.

Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a spending problem. Government does not have a revenue problem; government has a priority problem. It is time that we begin to fine tune our focus and decide what the priority of government ought to be.

Since when do we let the government decide what is or isn't good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway?... If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "it's in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible.

Madison understood that if you want to protect rights from government abuse, you would be wise not to give government the power in the first place that can be used to abuse rights. That is a lesson we have forgotten. As we have asked government to do more and more for us, we have forgotten that a government big enough to give us everything we want will be powerful enough to take everything we have.

The Senate, compared to the House, is where things are supposed to slow down, by design, Founding Father design. The Founding Fathers were hell-bent to stop government action. The Constitution limited government. And that's why people like Obama and Democrats call it a charter of negative liberties because it limits government. It's an anti-government, pro-citizen document. And the founders wanted to make it hard.

The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk. They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.

Do you people not care about this bogus government shutdown garbage? Back in 2013 Rob Portman, the senator from Ohio, Republican, suggested the End Government Shutdowns Act. So the End Government Shutdowns Act introduced by Senator Portman, the bill, you know what this would have done? Well, the Democrats shot it down. The Democrats don't want to get rid of the weapon they have by threatening a government shutdown and knowing the Republicans are gonna get blamed for it.

It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action. Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

The government can always rescue the markets or interfere with contract law whenever it deems convenient with little or no apparent cost. (Investors believe this now and, worse still, the government believes it as well. We are probably doomed to a lasting legacy of government tampering with financial markets and the economy, which is likely to create the mother of all moral hazards. The government is blissfully unaware of the wisdom of Friedrich Hayek: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.")

It has become fashionable to rail against government intervention in the economy, and the FHA is a favorite example by those trying to show the government's overreach. In reality, the FHA shows how government action during the Great Recession forestalled a much worse economic fate.

Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools ... Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools.

In World War II, the government went to the private sector. The government asked the private sector for help in doing things that the government could not do. The private sector complied. That is what I am suggesting.

In the past we entrusted money to the government sector and the government sector simply did not spend the money wisely. And that is why we need reforms, but the government sector is not being reformed.

I believe in a wall between church and state so high that no one can climb over it. When religion controls government, political liberty dies; and when government controls religion, religious liberty perishes. Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of religion. For too long the issue of government aid to church related organizations has been a divisive force in our society and in the Congress. It has erected communication barriers among our religions and fostered intolerance.

Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.

The President, and government, will only control the militia when a part of them is in the actual service of the federal government, else, they are independent and not under the command of the president or the government. The states would control the militia, only when called out into the service of the state, and then the governor would be commander in chief where enumerated in the respective state constitution.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do.

I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken care of by the government.... We do not want a benevolent government. We want a free and a just government.

Today the path of total dictatorship in the United States can be laid by strictly legal means, unseen and unheard by the Congress, the President, or the people. Outwardly we have a Constitutional government. We have operating within our government and political system, another body representing another form of government - a bureaucratic elite.

We should - we will - welcome people of faith into the political process... It is essential that believers enter the arena. Your involvement in politics helps determine how well our democracy works. We have finally learned that government programs cannot solve our problems. Government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives.

The tax that was supposed to soak the rich has instead soaked America. The beneficiary of the income tax has not been the poor, but big government. The income tax has given us a government bureaucracy that outnumbers the manufacturing work force. It has created welfare dependencies that have entrapped millions of Americans in an underclass that is forced to live a sordid existence of trading votes for government handouts.

My political tradition is on the left, but I think that more modern leftists, they sometimes get stuck with this vision of large government and social benefits and everything and that's against what is my position, because I think that the ultimate vision of Marx, Engels, and those people was to eliminate government entities and to give as much power to the people. And in modern standing that means direct democracy, that means all the power to the communities, it means gradually eliminating all government oppression on the society. And 100 years ago, leftists' major allies were labor unions.

The government can't create jobs; they'll destroy jobs trying to do it. The government doesn't have any money; all they have is a printing press. We need to free markets to create jobs; if the government wants to help, they should reduce their burden on the economy.

This bill would renounce the safe, proper, and acceptable role for Government as a referee of disputes between the governed. It would interpose the Government as a biased protagonist, armed with the awesome authority of the Federal Government, in addition to rulemaking and umpire powers. The broad grants of power to the Attorney General to initiate and intervene in civil actions would go far toward transforming him into George Orwell's 'Big Brother' of '1984,' in the year 1964.

By this action, the Government has proved that so long as it exists, none of us are truly free. Government and freedom are mutually exclusive. So if we value freedom, there's only one conclusion. It's time to get rid of this leftover relic we call Government.

It is all the more necessary under a system of free government that the people should be enlightened, that they should be correctly informed, than it is under an absolute government that they should be ignorant. Under a republic the institutions of learning, while bound by the constitution and laws, are in no way subservient to the government.

Government, we are sometimes told, is just another word for things we choose to do together. Like a lot of things politicians say, this sounds good. And, also like a lot of things politicians say, it isn't the least bit true. Many of the things government does, we don't choose. Many of the things we choose, government doesn't do. And whatever gets done, we're not the ones doing it. And those who are doing it often interpret their mandates selfishly.

As long as we cling to the superstition that we must look to government for money supply, instead of requiring it to look to us, just so long must we remain the subjects of government and it is vain to follow this or that policy or party or ism in the hope of salvation. We can control government and our own destiny only through our money power and until we exert that power it is useless for us to debate the pros and cons of political programs.

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised.

The Bible says we are to be salt and light. And salt and light means not just in the church and not just as a teacher or as a pastor or a banker or a lawyer, but in government and we have to have elected officials in government and we have to have the faithful in government and over time, that lie we have been told, the separation of church and state, people have internalized, thinking that they needed to avoid politics and that is so wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers.

What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

Donald Trump and Sean Spicer do one thing after another to keep the media attention focused on them. And it works. These legislative achievements are being made which are chipping away at anything the government has that's of any use to anybody. Paul Ryan, I think, is the most dangerous guy in the government. He knows what he's doing. And it's very systematic. I presume he's behind the cabinet appointments, but it's pretty amazing that every single cabinet appointment is somebody devoted to destroying that part of government.

The seeds of today's runaway government were planted when it was decided that government should help those who can't help themselves. From that modest, compassionate beginning to today's out-of-control mega-state, there's a straight, unbroken line. Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it.

The defining issue is that the government in Taiwan was considered to be the government of all of China, and the authorities in Beijing were not recognized as a government of China. So Taiwan was the residuary for all of China.

God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.

We believe in honesty, morality, and purity; but when they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when the Government conflicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government...Polygamy is a divine institution. It has been banded down direct from God. The United States cannot abolish it. No nation on the earth can prevent it, nor all the nations of the earth combined...I defy the United States; I will obey God.

When the white man governs himself, that is self-government; but when he governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism.

Unless the people, through unified action, arise and take charge of their government, they will find that their government has taken charge of them. Independence and liberty will be gone, and the general public will find itself in a condition of servitude to an aggregation of organized and selfish interest.

If you look at government policy generally, what government tries to do in all instances is to make sure that we take care of all elements that might relate to a particular issue.

You can't have a democracy with an armed political party willing to bomb its neighbor without the consent of its government or, you know, just deciding, "Well, let's create enough chaos and discord by lobbing rockets. And so the reality is in order for Lebanon to succeed and we want Lebanon's democracy to succeed the process is going to the Lebanese government's eventually going to have to deal with Hezbollah.

We must take away the government's credit card. With limits on both tax revenue and borrowing, the Federal government would finally be forced to get serious about spending cuts

I don't trust the church or the government, and anything the church or the government tells me I assume to be a lie or a conspiracy, until proven true.

To me, conservative means believing in a minimum amount of government and a maximum amount of freedom - and keeping government out of people's lives and business - and leaving people alone.

Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.

Though government has an important role to play in meeting the many challenges that remain before us, we are coming to understand that no organization, including government, will fully succeed without the active participation of each of us. Volunteers are vital to enabling this country to live up to the true promise of its heritage

I think what the American people are going to see down the road is significant inflationary pressure as a result of all this government printed, you know, this new money that the government is putting in.