Government Intervention Quotes

People constantly requesting government intervention are casting their problems at society. And, you know, there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then, also, to look after our neighbours. ~ Margaret Thatcher

Nothing rectifies out-of-control market failures like a healthy dose of
government intervention and mountains of bureaucracy. ~ George Carlin

In practice, without appropriate government intervention, Smith's "invisible hand" dons brass knuckles and conducts gang warfare, creating fierce battles between competitors who would be more than happy to define and enforce their own private property interests according to their own subjective rules. ~ Denise Caruso

That is the trick of good government. To make folk desire to live in such a way that there is no need for its intervention. ~ Robin Hobb

The gap between what one knows and what one thinks one knows may be higher in the ranks of the elite. The result is supposedly-clever government interventions, introduced with excessive confidence, leading to disastrous results. ~ Arnold Kling

We are too solicitous for government intervention, on the theory, first, that the people themselves are helpless, and second, that the Government has superior capacity for action. Often times both of these conclusions are wrong. ~ Calvin Coolidge

We are moving rapidly from an era of an oligopoly of content providers to an oligopoly of content controllers: new choke points. This is not media consolidation in the traditional sense, where a few huge conglomerates used economies of scale to dominate journalism by dominating the local and national agendas. This consolidation, to a very few companies plus increasing government intervention, is even more dangerous - and information providers of all kinds are finally starting to grasp what's happening. ~ Dan Gillmor

When government takes away options, it is bound to make some people worse off, even with intrinsicallly good intentions behind that government intervention. ~ Thomas Sowell

Mill sets out several related arguments for protecting freedom of speech, not just from oppressive government intervention, but also from social pressures. Underlying them all are the assumptions that (a) truth is valuable, and (b) no matter how certain someone is that they know the truth, their judgement is still fallible: they might still be wrong. ~ Nigel Warburton

The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great. ~ Amity Shlaes

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that. ~ Milton Friedman

Whether we like it or not, government intervention in the face of surplus is here to stay. ~ Benjamin Graham

The other view is of the official United States, the United States of armies and interventions. The United States that in 1953 overthrew the nationalist government of Mossadegh in Iran and brought back the shah. ~ Edward Said

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate. If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist. ~ Joseph Sobran

What would annoy the most people most often? That is the true left-wing test of government intervention. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

, I believe in some type of free market system. I just don't think you'll find an example of one completely free from government intervention. ~ Kenneth Eade

The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity. ~ Tony Benn

After the risky mortgage-lending practices fostered by government intervention led to massive defaults and foreclosures that caused financial institutions to collapse or be bailed out, Congressman Frank changed his tune completely. ~ Thomas Sowell

Let's face a historical truth: we have never had a "free market", we have always had government intervention in the economy, and indeed that intervention has been welcomed by the captains of finance and industry. They had no quarrel with "big government" when it served their needs. ~ Howard Zinn

Every government intervention [in the marketplace] creates unintended consequences, which lead to calls for further government interventions ... ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Capitalism cannot cause a financial crisis because capitalism is about markets constantly correcting errors. It is government intervention that can and often does cause crises, ~ John Tamny

(Economist Robert Higgs wrote a book about this phenomenon titled Crisis and Leviathan, in which he argues that government intervention inevitably creates future problems, which results in the government's intervening even more in an attempt to correct them.) ~ Glenn Beck

Government planning not only fails; it tends to produce outcomes that are the opposite of what its proponents say that they favor. The only stable and productive social system is one that embraces human liberty in its totality, and defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

It is the principal paradox of this period that the only sphere of our economic system in which government intervention is urgently necessary is also the only point at which action of the State is now effectively inhibited. It is in the region of wages and prices that we really require the continual economic leadership of government, but in our prevailing trade structure any such suggestion has come to be regarded as impious. ~ Oswald Mosley

This is not about abortion or the antics. This is about pro choice versus anti-choice and government intervention in a woman's personal decisions about her life. ~ Kathleen Turner

The individualist insists that drastic depressions are the result of credit inflation; (not excessive savings, as the Keynesians would have it) which at all times in history has been caused by direct government action or by government influence. As for aggravated unemployment, the individualist insists that it is exclusively the result of government intervention through inflation, wage rigidities, burdensome taxes, and restrictions on trade and production such as price controls and tariffs. The inflation that comes inevitably with government pump-priming soon catches up with the laborer, wipes away any real increase in his wages, discourages private investment, and sets off a new deflationary spiral which can in turn only be counteracted by more coercive and paternalistic government policies. And so it is that the "long run" is very soon a-coming, and the harmful effects of government intervention are far more durable than those that are sustained by encouraging the unhampered free market to work out its own destiny. ~ William F. Buckley Jr.

We need better options for securing the Internet. Instead of looking primarily for top-down government intervention, we can enlist the operators and users themselves. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

In a world dependent on international trade and commerce, and staggering under a heavy load of international debt, no policy is more destructive than protectionism. It cuts off markets, eliminates trade, causes unemployment in the export industries all over the world, depresses the prices of export commodities, especially farm products of the United States. It is the crowning folly of government intervention. ~ Hans F. Sennholz

The FHA's success provides strong evidence that government can and should play a role in the nation's mortgage finance system. It also demonstrates that although government intervention in the economy during the Great Recession was messy, things would have been a lot messier without it. ~ Mark Zandi

Contrary to the vision of the left, it was the free market which produced affordable housing - before government intervention made housing unaffordable. ~ Thomas Sowell

It's often difficult for conservatives to separate overall government intervention from a question as simple as the census. ~ Patrick McHenry

In sum, economists (and those who listened to them) became overconfident in their preferred models of the moment: markets are efficient, financial innovation improves the risk-return trade-off, self-regulation works best, and government intervention is ineffective and harmful. They forgot about the other models. There was too much Fama, too little Shiller. The economics of the profession may have been fine, but evidently there was trouble with its psychology and sociology. ~ Dani Rodrik

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse. ~ John Stossel

The Libertarian position on the freedom of speech is a strong support of freedom of speech, and we oppose government intervention in controlling what is or is not moral. ~ Michael Badnarik

Government intervention in the economy - through taxes, regulation and, most importantly, currency inflation - causes distortions and misallocations of capital that must eventually be unwound. The distortions degrade the general standard of living, and the economy goes into a recession (call that an incomplete cleansing). Or it goes into a depression - wherein the entire sickly structure comes unglued. ~ Doug Casey

As the character talks and moves, the world around him is slowly revealed, just like dollying a camera back for a wider look at things. So all my stories start with a character, and that character introduces setting, culture, conflict, government, economy ... all of it, through his or her eyes. ~ Robin Hobb

The government can back up its tastes and beliefs with the police power. That is why it cannot be permitted tastes and beliefs. Most emphatically, it cannot be permitted to define one group as being privileged over another group of people. It was wrong in the days of Jim Crow; it is wrong in the days of affirmative action. ~ Charles A. Murray

Impeaching a President implies that we make mistakes, grave ones, in electing or appointing officials, and that these elected men and women might be not great but small - unable to listen to, never mind to represent, the people they serve with justice, conscience, and equanimity. Impeachment suggests dysfunction, uncertainty, and discord - not the discord of war, which can be memorialized as valorous, purposeful, and idealistic, but the far less dramatic and often squalid, sad, intemperate conflicts of peace, partisanship, race, and rancor. Impeachment implies a failure - a failure of government of the people to function, and of leaders to lead. And presidential impeachment means failure at the very top. ~ Brenda Wineapple

We [the Republicans] help the middle class when we unburden them from the very policies that Hillary Clinton would double down on. She champions Big Government, which we know enables crony capitalism and exacerbates inequality. If you are wealthy, powerful and well-connected, you can handle Big Government. ~ Carly Fiorina

I don't think anybody has ever been able to live up to what they promised. I don't know a government that has ever been successful at that because once they get into power, things change and the world is controlled also by business now. ~ Hugh Masekela

There are no doubts that western governments are willfully inducing radiation sickness into segments of their city populations. ~ Steven Magee

But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand, which perishes in the twisting; that the State must follow, and notlead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails, is the expression of what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, the government in a matter of years has put a lot of energy behind recycling food waste as livestock feed. It's environmentally friendly, it provides cheap livestock feed for the farmers in those parts of the world, and it avoids sending the food waste to landfill. ~ Tristram Stuart

Pugsley's First Law of Government: All government programs accomplish the opposite of what they are designed to achieve. ~ John Pugsley

Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Many people say that government is necessary because some men cannot be trusted to look after themselves, but anarchists say that government is harmful because no men can be trusted to look after anyone else. ~ Nicolas Walter

The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses. ~ Austin O'Malley

I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring. ~ Albert Jay Nock

In our self-government, family government and circles of influence are we building and promoting a culture of life-giving edification or pursuing a death-oriented culture of entertainment? The first belongs to the Christian faith; the second is the progeny of the collapse of Rome. ~ Tim Yarbrough

Government has within it a tendency to abuse its powers. ~ John C. Calhoun

People have been fed misinformation. The fact is that the fighting that is going on on the ground in Syria is with Al Qaeda, with Jabhat al Nusra, with Daesh. The pockets, small pockets, of other groups are usually surrounded by these various extremist groups ... Once they stop fighting, there is nothing for the Syrian government to hit other than the terrorist organizations. ~ Mohammad Javad Zarif

Faced with the numbering logic of neoliberal regimes, literature offers an intervention in order to consider identity and voice, to consider representation in both the political and artistic sense of the term... [Literature and art] cultivate tension between an unresolved past and present, between invisibility and exposure, showing the dualities of face and mask that leave their trace on identitarian struggles today. ~ Francine Masiello

Look closely at these self-evident truths, these imperishable articles of American Faith upon which all our government is firmly based. First and foremost is the existence of God. Next comes the truth that all men are equal in the sight of God. Third is the fact of God's great gift of unalienable rights to every person on earth. Then follows the true and single purpose of all American Government, namely, to preserve and protect these God-made rights of God-made man. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The fact is that I'm interested in getting on with my job of holding the Government to account and I think that the Government should get on with the job of effectively running the country and not making excuses for poor performance, not lowering expectations. Their job is to deliver on their election commitments. ~ Tony Abbott

The law is an opinion with a gun. ~ Stefan Molyneux

If I was a private individual, I'd be more careful; but being as I'm a government, I'm privileged to make a God-damned fool of myself in any way I choose, especially by spending a lot more money than I've got or ever will have, and promising to do things that I ain't got a chance of doing. ~ Kenneth Roberts

Governor Winthrop despised democracy, which he brusquely labeled "the meanest and worst of all forms of Government." For Puritans, the church and state worked in tandem; the coercive arm of the magistracy was meant to preserve both public order and class distinctions. ~ Nancy Isenberg

I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as their ideas and that ideas were governments turned into men;
and so it began on a couch with a spilled martini
and it ended in the bedroom: desire, revolution,
nonsense ended, and the shades rattled in the wind,
rattled like sabres, cracked like cannon,
and 30 dogs, 20 men on 20 horses chased one fox
across the fields under the sun ~ Charles Bukowski

Let the entire system of government be strengthened, and let the balance of power be drawn up in such a manner that it will be permanent and incapable of decay because of its own tenuity. ~ Simon Bolivar

Any attempts by any government to change Community legislation to its own wishes are doomed to failure following the extension of policy areas now subject to majority voting ... In our opinion, this must have serious implications for the traditional view of Parliament as a legislative body sovereignty. ~ Margaret Thatcher

I realized that the legal system was corrupt when I went to court and the judge imposed a very short time limit on my evidence submission before removing my legal rights to free speech. ~ Steven Magee

You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Many people consider the things government does for them to be social progress but they regard the things government does for others as socialism.
[Address to National Press Club in Washington DC, as quoted in Freedom and Union (April 1952)] ~ Earl Warren

In every country except - industrial country except the United States, the government uses its massive purchasing power to negotiate drug prices. That's one of the reasons prices are so much higher in the United States than in other countries. ~ Noam Chomsky

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

The right of revolution is an inherent one. When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of oppression, if they are strong enough, whether by withdrawal from it, or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

Refugee problems can only be solved in the region (of origin) - maybe with a little help from the UN. Governments must provide something for their countries. They need to deliver. ~ Yoweri Museveni

We intend to lead a government of purpose and direction so that we can offer the people of this nation the opportunity to move forward to independence, democracy and equality. ~ Alex Salmond

Based on my experience as a prosecutor in Miami, illegal immigration is one of the most critical issues facing this country. As a prosecutor, I felt the burden of it. I think what's important ... is for the state and the federal government and for local governments to work together to do everything possible to control illegal immigration in a comprehensive way. ~ Janet Reno

Friend, you cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. And what one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government can't give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody. And when half of the people get the idea they don't have to work because the other half's going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea it does no good to work because somebody's going to get what I work for. That, dear friend, is about the end of any nation. ~ Adrian Rogers

The government of heaven, if wickedly administered, would become one of the worst governments upon the face of the earth. No matter how good a government is, unless it is administered by righteous men, an evil government will be made of it. ~ Brigham Young

As part of the National Strategy, the Government should commit itself to the virtual elimination of functional illiteracy and innumeracy. ~ May-Britt Moser

It is not the business of government to make men virtuous or religious, or to preserve the fool from the consequences of his own folly. Government should be repressive no further than is necessary to secure liberty by protecting the equal rights of each from aggression on the part of others, and the moment governmental prohibitions extend beyond this line they are in danger of defeating the very ends they are intended to serve. ~ Henry George

The big fear of the 1980s mortgage bond investor was that he would be repaid too quickly, not that he would fail to be repaid at all. The pool of loans underlying the mortgage bond conformed to the standards, in their size and the credit quality of the borrowers, set by one of several government agencies: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and Ginnie Mae. The loans carried, in effect, government guarantees; if the homeowners defaulted, the government paid off their debts. ~ Michael Lewis

But always I was a private citizen whose activities in government or political party were appointive. ~ Jane Byrne

What is Big Government but the Executive's cocaine dream, an activity devoted solely to jockeying for position, in which he may find license for malversation, and may take the company treasury and direct it toward those people who will support his continued incumbency--it is within the law. Its street name is 'earmarks,' but it is theft. ~ David Mamet

Our government is a bird with two right wings ... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti