Size Of Government Quotes

Conservatives came to office to reduce the size of government and enlarge the sphere of free and private initiative. But lately we have increased government in order to stay in office. And, soon, if we don't remember why we were elected we will have lost our office along with our principles, and leave a mountain of debt that our children's grandchildren will suffer from long after we have departed this earth. Because, my friends, hypocrisy is the most obvious of sins, and the people will punish it. ~ John McCain

In a clean break from the Obama years, and frankly from the years before this president, we will keep federal spending at 20 percent of GDP, or less. That is enough. The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth, or hard limits on the size of government, and we choose to limit government. ~ Paul Ryan

The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government. ~ Grover Norquist

We want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens. ~ Grover Norquist

Nelson Mandela stood up against a great injustice and was willing to pay a huge price for that. That's the reason he's mourned today, because of that struggle that he performed I mean, what he was advocating for was not necessarily the right answer, but he was fighting against some great injustice, and I would make the argument that we have a great injustice going on right now in this country with an ever-increasing size of government that is taking over and controlling people's lives, and Obamacare is front and center in that. ~ Rick Santorum

Tea Partiers hate government more than they hate the national debt. They refuse to reduce that debt with tax increases, even with tax increases on the wealthy, because a tax increase doesn't reduce the size of government. ~ Robert Reich

President Obama wants to increase the size of government and raise taxes, while I support less government and more individual freedom. ~ Ralph Hall

If you set as your goal to roll back the size of government, you have an obligation to answer the tough questions and show real courage, not just appeal to ideology. Treat the voters like adults. ~ Brian Baird

No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth! ~ Ronald Reagan

We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government. ~ Rand Paul

If politicians stopped meddling with things they don't understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocates. ~ Thomas Sowell

Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come. ~ Dick Morris

You can have very big local government. By big, I mean very engaged government. Do you measure it in terms of the number of laws? Number of employees? You could make arguments for either one. I tend to think the axis of the size of government is the wrong concern. But I do think that situating power more locally is a legitimate approach. ~ Zephyr Teachout

We pledge to you that we will create jobs. End economic uncertainty and make America more competitive. We will cut Washington wasteful spending and reduce the size of government. And we will reform Congress and restore your trust in government. ~ Kevin McCarthy

Someone has to stay on the line and say, no, we can do this by cutting spending and reducing the size of government. That's what I was committed to doing. ~ Chris Christie

The key difference between foot voting and ballot box voting is that foot voters don't have the same incentive to be rationally ignorant as ballot box voters do. In fact, they have strong incentives to seek out useful information. They also have much better incentives to objectively evaluate what they do learn. Unlike political fans, foot voters know they will pay a real price if they do a poor job of evaluating the information they get...
The informational advantages of foot voting over ballot box voting strengthen the case for limiting and decentralizing government. The more decentralized government is, the more issues can be decided through foot voting. It is usually much easier to vote with your feet against a local government than a state government, and much easier to do it against a state than against the federal government.
It is also usually easier to foot vote in the private sector than the public. A given region is likely to have far more private planned communities and other private sector organizations than local governments. Choosing among the former usually requires far less in the way of moving costs than choosing among the latter.
Reducing the size of government could also alleviate the problem of ignorance by making it easier for rationally ignorant voters to monitor its activities. A smaller, less complicated government is easier to keep track of. ~ Ilya Somin

What I've said about compromise, I hope to build a conservative majority so bipartisanship becomes Democrats joining Republicans to roll back the size of government, reduce the bureaucracy, and get America moving again. ~ Richard Mourdock

I am perfectly happy to compromise whether it's with Democrats or anybody else, as long as we're reducing the size of government. ~ Ted Cruz

The job of conservatives is to keep the Republican Party driving on the right-hand side of the road. There are many ways we do this. We argue, we publish, we lobby, we campaign for conservative candidates. Another thing we do is, when the GOP goes off the rails on really key issues - size of government, the National Question, Wilsonian adventures - we stay home on election day. ~ John Derbyshire

Voters did say 'repeal health care', they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.' ~ Chuck Schumer

I don't believe we need any more taxes. We need to curtail the size of government. That seems to be a common thread among a majority of Americans out there that understand that we have to limit the size and scope of our government. ~ Jeff Landry

it's not the quantity of government regulations, taxes, or the size of government that distinguish Australia or Germany from the US, but whether government rules broadcast the gains from growth widely or narrowly. ~ George R. Tyler

Either we start cutting the government and shrinking the size of government, or else we're going to face the political wrath of the American people. ~ Marlin Stutzman

Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it's only the other fellow who's greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system. ~ Milton Friedman

The stable funding announced today will allow Special Olympics to grow and benefit an increasing number of Canadians. I am proud that our Government is committed to providing opportunities for Canadians of all ages and all abilities to engage in sport and physical activity and to enjoy an active and healthy lifestyle. ~ Jim Flaherty

You really expose yourself when you try and go to up the volume and up the size of your performance. ~ Alexander Siddig

The black bird cocked its head to one side, and then said, in a voice like stones being struck, 'You shadow man.'
'I'm Shadow,' said Shadow. The bird hopped up onto the fawn's rump, raised its head, ruffled its crown and neck feathers. It was enormous and its eyes were black beads. There was something intimidating about a bird that size, this close.
'Says he will see you in Kay-ro.' tokked the raven. Shadow wondered which of Odin's ravens this was: Huginn or Munnin, Memory or Thought.
'Kay-ro?' he asked.
'In Egypt.'
'How am I going to go to Egypt?'
'Follow Mississippi. Go south. Find Jackal.'
'Look,' said Shadow, 'I don't want to seem like I'm-- Jesus, look...' he paused. Regrouped. He was cold, standing in a wood, talking to a big black bird who was currently brunching on Bambi. 'Okay. What I'm trying to say is I don't want mysteries.'
'Mysteries,' agreed the bird helpfully.
'What I want is explanations. Jackal in Kay-ro. This does not help me. It's a line from a bad spy thriller. ~ Neil Gaiman

For a house,
the good thing is level ground.
In thinking,
depth is good.
The good of giving is magnanimity;
of speaking, honesty;
of government, order.
The good of work is skill,
and of action, timing.

No competition,
so no blame. ~ Lao Tzu

Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I'm seemingly O.K. with it, I can't preach how to be O.K. with it. I don't think I still am O.K. with it. There's days when I'm not. ~ Peter Dinklage

You can't go by what the governments say or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred of Americans in Britain than in France. ~ Whit Stillman

You don't really want an army of people making individual decisions. And I don't think I completely understood that until people gave me examples of what happens when your army takes over your government and it's like, "Oh, yeah, I guess you can't really have people make individual moral decisions." ~ Joel Stein

To me, patriotism means dedication to the principles on which the country was founded and a willingness to stand firm and fight for these principles regardless of what the government says or does ~ Richard J. Maybury

If your friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 45 percent higher ... If your friend's friends are obese, your risk of obesity is 25 percent higher ... If your friend's friend's friend, someone you probably don't even know, is obese, your risk of obesity is 10 percent higher. It's only when you get to your friend's friend's friend's friends that there's no longer a relationship between that person's body size and your own body size. ~ Nicholas A. Christakis

When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves. ~ Jerry Brown

Just look at that Forbes 400. Takes a billion three to get on the Forbes 400 this year. And the aggregate wealth is just staggering. And those people are paying less percentage of their total income to the federal government than their receptionists are [ ... ] I'll bet a million dollars against any member of the Forbes 400 who challenges - me that the average for the Forbes 400 will be less than the average of their receptionists. ~ Warren Buffett

The rest of the world in which I lived was still stumbling about in search of a weapon with which to exterminate this monster [homosexuality] whose shape and size were not yet known or even guessed at. It was thought to be Greek in origin, smaller than socialism but more deadly, especially to children. ~ Quentin Crisp

I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government. ~ George McGovern

The Republicans didn't want the government to run your life, because Jesus should. That was really part of their thing: less government, more Jesus. Now it's like, how about more government and Jesus? ~ Trey Parker

The care of a house, the conduct of a home, the management of children, the instruction and government of servants, are as deserving of scientific treatment and scientific professors and lectureships as are the care of farms, the management of manure and crops, and the raising and care of stock. ~ Catharine Beecher

The failure of Lehman may have allowed the government to do more to prop up the economy than it otherwise could. ~ Andrew Ross Sorkin

Frequent punishments are always a sign of weakness or laziness on the part of a government. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The scandalous question that hangs over modern government and excites perpetual outrage is about political money and what it buys. What exactly do these contributors get in return for the hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars they funnel to the politicians? ~ William Greider

In the name of the United States and President Bush, I want to thank the Mexican people, President Fox and his government for their friendship. ~ Tony Garza

Having wallowed in a delightful orgy of anti-French sentiment, having deplored and applauded the villains themselves, having relished the foibles of bankers, railwaymen, diplomats, and police, the public was now ready to see its faith restored in the basic soundness of banks, railroads, government, and police. ~ Michael Crichton

One third of the $15 trillion of mortgages in existence in 2008 are owned, or securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing and the Veterans Administration. Wall Street buyers of repackaged loans didn't mind buying risky paper because they assumed that they would be guaranteed by the federal government: read bailout from the taxpayers. Today's housing mess can be laid directly at the feet of Congress and the White House. ~ Walter E. Williams

Even though I started playing the violin when I was four, my early chamber music experiences helped build a strong foundation for my solo work, as all music is a rich language and dialogue that is shared on stage, no matter what the size of the ensemble. ~ Anne Akiko Meyers

VERY EARLY ONE MORNING in July 1977, the FBI, having been tipped off about Operation Snow White, carried out raids on Scientology offices in Los Angeles and Washington, DC, carting off nearly fifty thousand documents. One of the files was titled "Operation Freakout." It concerned the treatment of Paulette Cooper, the journalist who had published an exposé of Scientology, The Scandal of Scientology, six years earlier. After having been indicted for perjury and making bomb threats against Scientology, Cooper had gone into a deep depression. She stopped eating. At one point, she weighed just eighty-three pounds. She considered suicide. Finally, she persuaded a doctor to give her sodium pentothal, or "truth serum," and question her under the anesthesia. The government was sufficiently impressed that the prosecutor dropped the case against her, but her reputation was ruined, she was broke, and her health was uncertain. The day after the FBI raid on the Scientology headquarters, Cooper was flying back from Africa, on assignment for a travel magazine, when she read a story in the International Herald Tribune about the raid. One of the files the federal agents discovered was titled "Operation Freakout." The goal of the operation was to get Cooper "incarcerated in a mental institution or jail. ~ Lawrence Wright

The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that. ~ Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Freedom exists only where people take care of the government. ~ Woodrow Wilson

The legitimacy of the government depends on the continuous exercise of an act of forgetting. ~ Begoña Aretxaga

Of all Americans who have appeared on the nation's postage stamps, Ayn Rand is probably the only one to have thought that the United States government has no business delivering mail. ~ Thomas Mallon

Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government. ~ Ulrich Beck

Some within the government and some former revolutionaries had finally realized that there was no way the Islamic regime could make us intellectuals vanish. In forcing us underground, it had also made us more appealing, more dangerous and, in a strange way, more powerful. It had made us scarce and, because of this, also in demand. ~ Azar Nafisi

My friends are very rich. Elizabeth Taylor sends flowers the size of the bathtub. I'm not kidding. ~ Charles Nelson Reilly

It is right that the influence of the Government should be known in every humble home as the guardian of frugal comfort and content, and a defense against unjust exactions, and the unearned tribute persistently coveted by the selfish and designing. It is right that efficiency and honesty in public service should not be sacrificed to partisan greed; and it is right that the suffrage of our people should be pure and free. ~ Grover Cleveland

If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be a new party of nationwide and non-sectional principles, a party where the titular national chiefs and the real state leaders shall be in genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the people shall be supreme, a party that shall represent in the nation and the several states alike the same cause, the cause of human rights and of governmental efficiency. At present both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes, and apparently each has set up as its ideal of business and political development a government by financial despotism tempered by make-believe political assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, they represent government of the needy many by professional politicians in the interests of the rich few. This is class government, and class government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It's the social counterpart of natural selection. Those groups within society that craved power at the expense of everything else - morality, self-respect, honest friendship - they achieved dominance long ago. The mass of the public no longer has any contact with government; all they know is that if they step out of line they'll be trodden on. ~ John Brunner

But ours was intended to be a citizen government. It is what of, by and for the people means. And when our most important issue in California is the creation of jobs, I think it's quite helpful to have someone in the U.S. Senate or in the governor's seat who actually knows where jobs come from. ~ Carly Fiorina

It seems to me that this is theoretically right, for whatever the question under discussion -- whether religious, philosophical, political, or economic; whether it concerns prosperity, morality, equality, right, justice, progress, responsibility, cooperation, property, labor, trade, capital, wages, taxes, population, finance, or government -- at whatever point on the scientific horizon I begin my researches, I invariably reach this one conclusion: The solution to the problems of human relationships is to be found in liberty. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Bureaucracy is ever desirous of spreading its influence and its power. You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time
making it the master of the people's souls and thoughts. ~ Herbert Hoover

We have a lot of things we give away to people who are very, very wealthy in this country. And I'm not sure that our federal government can afford that. ~ Claire McCaskill

Everything that makes man's life worthwhile - family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head - all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. ~ Robert Kennedy

It was the beginning of his personal crusade to make life easier for the more than forty million disabled Americans. By 1990 he had moved Congress to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that mandated changes in public buildings, accommodations, and transportation to make it easier for the disabled to function in American society. For Dole, it was his greatest legislative victory. Yet it was also a classic example of the two sides of Bob Dole. Although he was a champion of this federal directive that imposed on states and businesses rigid requirements that were costly and, in some cases, little used, he was also known for advocating a reduced role for the federal government. On ~ Tom Brokaw

Absolute size by itself is no indicator of success and achievement, let alone of managerial competence. Being the right size is. ~ Peter Drucker

It is quite clear that as long as the nations of the world spend most of their energy, money, and emotional strength in quarreling with words and weapons, a true offensive against the common problems that threaten human survival is not very likely. A world government that can channel human efforts in the direction of the great solutions seems desirable, even essential. Naturally, such a world government should be a federal one, with regional and local autonomy safeguarded and with cultural diversity promoted. ~ Isaac Asimov

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies. ~ Milton Friedman

The Church, however, is a self-governing society, distinct from the State, having its officers and laws, and, therefore, an administrative government of its own. ~ Charles Hodge

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor. ~ H.L. Mencken

Most men spend the energy of their lives trying to eliminate risk, or squeezing it down to a more manageable size. ~ John Eldredge

Dexterity is one of the chief weapons of diplomacy; governments rely more upon the supremacy of this instrument, when in the hands of a skillful diplomatist, than in the soundness or justice of their claims. ~ James Ellis

In the constitution of Spain as proposed by the late Cortes, there was a principle entirely new to me: ... that no person born after that day should ever acquire the rights of citizenship until he could read and write. It is impossible sufficiently to estimate the wisdom of this provision. Of all those which have been thought of for securing fidelity in the administration of the government, constant reliance to the principles of the constitution, and progressive amendments with the progressive advances of the human mind or changes in human affairs, it is the most effectual. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Pat Robertson has written in a book a few years ago that we should have a world government, but only when the Messiah arrives. He wrote, literally, any attempt to achieve world order before that time must be the work of the Devil. Well join me - I'm glad to sit here at the right hand of Satan. ~ Walter Cronkite