Government Waste Quotes

The Republican name used to be synonymous with limiting the size and scope of government, and we need to re-establish that reputation. We must work to eliminate government waste, make certain taxpayer dollars go to meaningful programs, and leave resources directly with the people. ~ Tim Walberg

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater. ~ Milton Friedman

The idea that government can instruct private enterprise on how to eliminate waste is preposterous. ~ James Cook

New Rule: If we want to find a place to cut government waste, we must start with the DEA rubber duck. Yes, on the DEA's website you can buy a rubber ducky with a DEA badge and a cop's hat. Which I recommend doing, because they're a great place to hide your weed. ~ Bill Maher

It must be a conviction Government. As Prime Minister I could not waste time having internal arguments. ~ Margaret Thatcher

The core of America is not racist. It is not hostile to women. It is increasingly offended by gay bashing. Yet it abhors government waste. It believes strongly in fiscal responsibility such as balanced budgets. It is pro-economic growth. It is concerned about the environment. It is intolerant of people on welfare who disdain the notion of work. But it wants poor kids to have school lunches and it wants to spend money to have good schools. In sum, most Americans are sensible, good-hearted, and prudent. The issue, then, is whether there is a political party that can welcome them home. ~ Paul Tsongas

To pay out millions upon millions of dollars in bonuses for incomplete work, poor performance, and unacceptable products is the height of government waste and mismanagement. ~ Jim Gibbons

The biggest government waste: The death penalty. An individual death-penalty case could climb to $100 million, much of it spent at the litigation level. Also, DNA evidence has exonerated nearly 300 death-row inmates. ~ John McLaughlin

In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. ~ Zell Miller

Nothing is worse, or more of a breach of the social contract between citizen and state, than for government officials, bureaucrats and agencies to waste the money entrusted to them by the people they serve. ~ Bob Riley

Our fathers founded the first secular government that was ever founded in this world. Recollect that. The first secular government - the first government that said every church has exactly the same rights and no more; every religion has the same rights, and no more. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

There are a lot of things that government doesn't do well. One of things that government does do well is build stuff. ~ Mick Cornett

The function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it invites a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it passes for acceptance of an idea. ~ William O. Douglas

We want to see oil and gas regulations on a continental basis given the integrated nature of this industry, with the current conditions in the oil and gas sector, this government will not consider unilateral regulation. ~ Stephen Harper

Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States. ~ Samuel Freeman Miller

Government is the human attempt to mandate goodness and ensure fairness. Yet there is only one place where goodness is born, and that is in the human heart. There is only one place where fairness can be conceptualized, and that is in the human mind. There is only one place where love can be experienced truly, and that is in the human soul. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site. ~ Holly Bourne

The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost. ~ Ben Bernanke

Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government. ~ Edward L. Bernays

Depression, as far as I'm concerned, is just a waste of time. ~ Helen Reddy

Thousands of civilians have lost their lives to terrorist attacks inside Pakistan, and thousands more will - because, unlike the Pakistani government, which has no coherent policy to deal with the radicals, the Taliban have one to deal with Pakistan and its citizens. ~ Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

For me, liberals are people who seek to use government to promote the general welfare. ~ Douglas Massey

To gain your energy from the right sources means you gain more energy from less; reducing the retarding factors means you have less friction that wastes your energy; focusing your motive power towards the direction of the collective human movement means you use others' energy to boost your energy.

Gain more energy, waste less energy, spend the energy so next time you'll need less to achieve more. Increase human mass, reduce retarding force, and increase the force accelerating the human mass. Follow this process with reason.

Gain more, waste less, spend efficiently, learn. ~ Nikola Tesla

In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation's moral and material health. The whole educational system, theater, film, literature, the press and broadcasting - all these will be used as a means to this end. ~ Adolf Hitler

People who know God truly change the life of their nation, and not the government ~ Sunday Adelaja

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy. ~ Howard Zinn

Our government, conceived in liberty and purchased with blood, can be preserved only by constant vigilance. May we guard it as our children's richest legacy, for what shall it profit our nation if it shall gain the whole world and lose "the spirit that prizes liberty as the heritage of all men in all lands everywhere"? ~ William Jennings Bryan

Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For want of a sufficient fund of philosophy and experience, men could see no further than the present inconveniences, and never thought of providing remedies for future ones, but in proportion as they arose. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It's all very well to run around saying regulation is bad, get the government off our backs, etc. Of course our lives are regulated. When you come to a stop sign, you stop; if you want to go fishing, you get a license; if you want to shoot ducks, you can shoot only three ducks. The alternative is dead bodies at the intersection, no fish, and no ducks. OK?
(Getting Control of the Frontier, Gainsville Sun, March 22, 1995) ~ Molly Ivins

People aren't going to go bankrupt anymore if they have a serious illness, which was a serious issue here in the country before the Affordable Care Act. And, in fact, the expense of expanding health care for those who need the subsidy is picked up by the federal government for most of the early years. ~ Deval Patrick

These senior claims were supposed to be very low-risk; after all, how likely was it that a large number of people would default on their mortgages at the same time? The answer, of course, is that it was quite likely in an environment where homes were worth 30, 40, 50 percent less than the borrowers originally paid for them. So a lot of supposedly safe assets, assets that had been rated AAA by Standard & Poor's or Moody's, ended up becoming "toxic waste", worth only a fraction of their face value. ~ Paul Krugman

You joined the wrong team, boy. You fought for a lost cause," he said, alongside a bunch of trash talk degrading my family, my religion, and myself, not to mention all kinds of threats against my family to pay for "my crimes," which goes against any common sense. I knew that he had no power, but I knew that he was speaking on behalf of the most powerful country in the world, and obviously enjoyed the full support of his government. ~ Mohamedou Ould Slahi

Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith's invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote. ~ Milton Friedman

The misery is what should concern us: the death, rage and distress of others always comes back to haunt us. Especially when the tragedies are partially due to our own actions, policies and erroneous vision of the planet. September 11 happens and we are surprised to learn that there are people who hate us. Even then ,we mourn the 3,000 deaths without a thought for the victims our government has left all over the world because of our evil and immoral politics. ~ Marc Vachon

No state, no government exists. What does in fact exist is a man, or a few men, in power over many men. ~ Rose Wilder Lane

What is the free market? Well, the free market, [we're told] is really a terrible, inhuman kind of arrangement, because it treats people like commodities. But how does the government treat people? Like garbage-worse than garbage. Not like commodities, but like nothing. We libertarians understand that we are not humane, we are not compassionate. It's the leftists and the liberals, they're the ones who are human and compassionate, but you'd better not get in their way. ~ Ralph Raico

We are a revitalized tribe. After every major upheaval, we have been able to gather together as a people to rebuild a community and a government. Individually and collectively, Cherokee people possess an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward. We are able to do that because our culture, though certainly diminished, has sustained us since time inmemorial. This Cherokee culture is a well-kept secret. ~ Wilma Mankiller

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom
and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Our job as a government is to start with the great underpinnings of our current economic growth - particularly defence and mining - and build on these. ~ Jay Weatherill

Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger. ~ Ron Paul

Beware leverage in all its forms. Borrowers - individual, corporate, or government - should always match fund their liabilities against the duration of their assets. Borrowers must always remember that capital markets can be extremely fickle, and that it is never safe to assume a maturing loan can be rolled over. Even if you are unleveraged, the leverage employed by others can drive dramatic price and valuation swings; sudden unavailability of leverage in the economy may trigger an economic downturn. ~ Seth Klarman

No salesman can ever guarantee you a grant from any government or non-profit organization. ~ Matthew Lesko

There let her pray to the one god she worships: Death
who knows?
may just reprieve her from death. Or she may learn a last, better late than never, what a waste of breath it is to worship Death. ~ Sophocles

Ironically, in the full-fledged transfer society, where governments busy themselves redistributing income by means of hundreds of distinct programs, hardly anyone is better off as a result. ~ Robert Higgs

There are some who maintain that trade will regulate itself, and it is not to be benefited by the encouragements or restraints of government. Such persons will imagine that there is no need of a common directing power. This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes, which have grown into credit among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations. ~ Alexander Hamilton

If you look at the purported dangers of salt or fat, there is no consensus of support in scientific literature. So I would ask first: 'Is it possible to have an informed government that actually follows the science?' From what I've seen, it's not likely. ~ Tim Ferriss

Hunger Games and A New Hope: Hero rises up from the poorest place in the galaxy. Put through some challenges. Finds romance and a side-kick. Somebody dies. Check
Catching Fire and Empire Strikes Back: Totalitarian government strikes back, some other people die, and the rebellion starts gaining momentun.
Mockingjay/Return of the Jedi: Bunch of minor characters die, and then one major one. Rebellion wins, if in an unexpected way. Characters all get married.
I think Suzanne Collins has some explaining to do. ~ Caleb Eversole

I've been scared of so much stupid crap in my life. Making a bad grade or not fitting in. God, I was scared of you. And it was all such a waste. None of it matters now that the real scary shit is here. ~ Cristin Terrill