Smaller Government Quotes

Since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, conservatives have succeeded by adhering to a platform that rests firmly on three legs: smaller government, faith and family, and a strong national defense. These three legs do not merely represent a political coalition; they are three necessary components of a strong and secure America. ~ Frank Gaffney

Republicans want smaller government for the same reason crooks want fewer cops; it's easier to get away with murder. ~ James Carville

I look forward to working with our leadership team to advance the causes of smaller government, lower taxes, eliminating terrorism, and providing affordable health care, among other issues. ~ Howard Coble

My philosophy is not a bean-counting, accounting 'look at this.' It is a philosophy that smaller government is better government, and government that is closer to the people is best of all. ~ John Bolton

Western culture prefers us not to believe we're defined or limited. It wants us to buy the fiction that the self is open, free, nothing but pure, bright possibility; that we're all born with the same suite of potential abilities, as neural 'blank slates', as if all human brains come off the production line at Foxconn. This seduces us into accepting the cultural lie that says we can do anything we set our minds to, that we can be whoever we want to be. This false idea is of immense value to our neoliberal economy. The game it compels us to play can best be justified morally if all the contestants start out with an equal shot at winning. Moreover, if we believe we're all the same, this legitimizes calls for deregulated corporation and smaller government: it means that men and women who lose simply didn't want it badly enough, that they just didn't believe - in which case, why should anyone else catch their fall? ~ Will Storr

The demand of our people in 1980 is not for smaller government or bigger government but for better government. ~ Edward Kennedy

There's nothing on this green earth that a liberal progressive fears more than a black American who wants a better life and a smaller government. ~ Allen West

The one thing the Victorians really believed in was philanthropy. I think we've forgotten the obligation to be philanthropic. I think we need smaller government, but I want to make it clear I'm not the Sarah Palin of the Cotswolds. ~ Susan Hill

I think the best thing we can do is sell that idea of smaller government - of fiscal responsibility vs. the Obama record. Obama made promises, and on every promise in which he's actually delivered, things have gotten worse instead of better. He said if we get ObamaCare it'll help, but health care prices went up. ~ Richard Mourdock

I stated that I'm a libertarian Republican, which means I believe in a series of issues, such as smaller government, constraint on budget deficits, free markets, globalization, and a whole series of other things, including welfare reform. ~ Alan Greenspan

We must create a [economic] crisis in order to ensure that there is no alternative to a smaller government. ~ Jeb Bush

When Pat Buchanan came out against the Beijing Women's Conference and there were women standing next to him, smiling and laughing when he was making fun of it, I was so embarrassed. I don't mind when the more liberal or moderate Republican women talk about smaller government or money issues and things of that nature. But when I see a conservative Republican woman in line with the Christian right or coming out against abortion and day-care issues and for taking away womens' aid, I see a self-hating, unenlightened woman, like a self-hating Jew. That blows my mind. I don't get it at all. ~ Janeane Garofalo

One side of the American psyche wants smaller government, lower taxes, and more choices for individuals, even if those choices increase risk. The other wants a strong social safety net to protect the weakest among us, even if it costs more to minimize risk. ~ Ron Fournier

I'm not a 'messiah' coming to change Washington. I don't come with a political background, so I think it's part of my responsibility to raise my hand and say 'Why?' Folks don't just want smaller government; they want an efficient small government. ~ James Lankford

A smaller government reflecting the needs of the middle class and poor is superior to a big government reflecting the needs of the privileged and powerful. ~ Robert B. Reich

Don't get me wrong, I am a proud Republican, and I want to support my party. I am a firm believer in the Republican principles of smaller government, low taxes and economic freedom. I have spent my time in government service fighting for these principles. ~ David Schweikert

Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats. ~ Grover Norquist

After 20 years in Congress, I still believe that smaller government and lower taxes are the most effective economic policies. ~ Howard Coble

Conservatives believe in smaller government and in the power of the electorate. So I think that we're less likely to try to use a dramatic forum to warp people's political views. ~ David Mamet

The real issue for the public is to figure out which narrative do we want. We can have a bigger government, if that's the public's choice. It'll just require higher taxes on every American. Do you want that, or do you want smaller government, smaller taxes? ~ Glenn Hubbard

Ronald Reagan's vision of smaller government, less taxes, and a strong national defense has led to a prosperous America. As president, he rebuilt our military and reinvigorated our confidence in ourselves. ~ David Vitter

When you put your faith in big government, you end up an apologist for mass murder. ~ Karl Hess

We do need an attitude of leadership in our government which demonstrates faith in major population centres outside of Perth. ~ Andrew Forrest

Government, obviously, cannot fill a child's emotional needs. Nor can it fill his spiritual and moral needs. Government is not a father or mother. Government has never raised a child, and it never will. ~ William Bennett

If I had to use a single word to describe what is fundamentally wrong with government today, I would use the word fraud. ~ Robert Higgs

The 5th Amendment guarantees that defendants can't face 'double jeopardy,' which means the government can't prosecute a person a second time for the same crime if the jury returns a verdict. Only if the jury doesn't reach a decision can prosecutors elect to retry the case. ~ Robert Shapiro

In a society where the majority choose charisma over character, democracy does more harm than good to the actual progress of that society ~ Abhijit Naskar

Betrayed and abandoned, cut adrift or superannuated, coerced or manipulated, speeded up, cheated, living in the shadows - this is a recipe for acquiescence. Yet conditions of life and labor as bad as or even far worse than these once were instigators to social upheaval. Alongside the massing of enemies on the outside - employers, insulated and self-protective union leaders, government policy makers, the globalized sweatshop, and the globalized megabank - something in the tissue of working-class life had proved profoundly disempowering and also accounted for the silence.

Work itself had lost its cultural gravitas. What in part qualified the American Revolution as a legitimate overturning of an ancien régime was its political emancipation of labor. Until that time, work was considered a disqualifying disability for participating in public life. It entailed a degree of deference to patrons and a narrow-minded preoccupation with day-to-day affairs that undermined the possibility of disinterested public service. By opening up the possibility of democracy, the Revolution removed, in theory, that crippling impairment and erased an immemorial chasm between those who worked and those who didn't need to. And by inference this bestowed honor on laboring mankind, a recognition that was to infuse American political culture for generations.

But in our new era, the nature of work, the abuse of work, exploitation at work, and all the prophecies and jeremiads, the condem ~ Steve Fraser

All the public business in Congress now connects itself with intrigues, and there is great danger that the whole government will degenerate into a struggle of cabals. ~ John Quincy Adams

We have lost that which has made us great over the generations, and that is the sense of individual and personal responsibility that we can come up, we can pursue our dreams and our aspirations and we won't be blocked by government regulation, by the inability to get a loan as a small business to make our dreams come true. ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.

The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not. ~ John Quincy Adams

It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe. ~ Thomas Paine

Thus, it is a political axiom that power follows property. But it is now a historical fact that the means of production are fast becoming the monopolistic property of Big Business and Big Government. Therefore, if you believe in democracy, make arrangements to distribute property as widely as possible. Or take the right to vote. In principle, it is a great privilege. In practice, as recent history has repeatedly shown, the right to vote, by itself, is no guarantee of liberty. Therefore, if you want to avoid dictatorship by referendum, break up modern society's merely functional collectives into self-governing, voluntarily co-operating groups, capable of functioning outside the bureaucratic systems of Big Business and Big Government. ~ Aldous Huxley

We have to find places that we protect away from government so that we can all be the unique and interesting and, in my case, somewhat deviant people we'd like to be. ~ Alexander Karp

But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism. ~ Ron Paul

What can a mere French minister do when associated with Lloyd George, who thinks he is Napoleon, and Woodrow Wilson, who thinks he is Jesus Christ? ~ Georges Clemenceau

In the major institutions of education, government, science, and the arts, we are witnessing the imposition of a post-Christian view of life. It now dominates in motion pictures, television, and every other form of entertainment. ~ D. James Kennedy

What makes America great was a government that was founded to be limited to doing one thing. I really believe the whole purpose of America, the aspirational value - why everybody who wants to come to this country wants to come here - was because we respected the dignity of every living person. ~ Rick Santorum

I don't want to transform America. I want to restore to America the economic values of freedom and opportunity and limited government that has made us the powerhouse of the world. ~ Mitt Romney

The sanction of force stands behind the medley of personal orders and regulations of Martial Law. The sanction of the people's consent stands behind the hierarchy of laws. In one situation, the population is regimented into acquiescence. In the other, the population voluntarily establishes a contract with Parliament. For this reason, one is called a regime and the other, a government. Martial law rests on the sanction of force and not on the sanction of law. ~ Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

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. ~ Lyn Nofziger

Ten-year-old boys move differently than middle-aged women, who move differently than athletic guys, who move differently than government bureaucrats. ~ Brad Bird

All of us - employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves - are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous. ~ Ross Perlin

Our plans for 'Superman?' I can't say. This is the most super secret thing ever. It's like working for the government, like I'm on a covert mission. ~ Zack Snyder

If you want to curry favor with a politician, give him credit for something someone else did. ~ James Abourezk

Higher government spending will not lead to more rapid monetary growth and inflation if additional spending is financed either by taxes or by borrowing from the public. In that case, government has more to spend, the public has less. Higher government spending is matched by lower private spending for consumption and investment. However, ~ Milton Friedman

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived. ~ John Quincy Adams

The question is whether voters, particularly independents, believe that Obama truly values personal liberty and responsibility as much as the government-bought safety net. ~ Ron Fournier

I'm the treasurer of the state of Ohio, where, when the United States credit rating was downgraded for the first time in American history, and 14 government funds around the country were downgraded, we earned the highest rating we could earn on our $4 billion investment fund. ~ Josh Mandel

Since our civilization is irreversibly dependent on electronics, abolition of EMR is out of the question. However, as a first step toward averting disaster, we must halt the introduction of new sources of electromagnetic energy while we investigate the biohazards of those we already have with a completeness and honesty that have so far been in short supply. New sources must be allowed only after their risks have been evaluated on the basis of the knowledge acquired in such a moratorium.

With an adequately funded research program, the moratorium need last no more than five years, and the ensuing changes could almost certainly be performed without major economic trauma. It seems possible that a different power frequency - say 400 hertz instead of 60 - might prove much safer. Burying power lines and providing them with grounded shields would reduce the electric fields around them, and magnetic shielding is also feasible.

A major part of the safety changes would consist of energy-efficiency reforms that would benefit the economy in the long run. These new directions would have been taken years ago but for the opposition of power companies concerned with their short-term profits, and a government unwilling to challenge them. It is possible to redesign many appliances and communications devices so they use far less energy. The entire power supply could be decentralized by feeding electricity from renewable sources (wind, flowing water, sunlight, georhermal and ocean the ~ Robert O. Becker

I think that there are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all the species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. Is there a conflict between science and religion here? There most certainly is. ~ Daniel Dennett