Quotes from Dick Armey

The people themselves, not their government, should be trusted with spending their own money and making their own decisions.

Politics will sooner or later make fools of everybody.

The reason families need two incomes today is not to support themselves but to support the government.

The American Dream is not to own your own home, but to get your kids out of it.

I don't believe America will justifiably make an unprovoked attack on another nation. It would not be consistent with what we have been as a nation or what we should be as a nation.

The Democratic Party has pretty much abandoned all the things that they cherish.

Our current tax system is broken.

I call it small government, grass-roots activism: The Tea Party activists are a part of it, FreedomWorks is part of it. FreedomWorks is the longest-standing, most active organization within this movement.

You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.

Three groups spend other people's money: children, thieves, and politicians. All three need supervision.

A few stalwart fiscal conservatives in Congress also bravely stepped up and stood against the plan to socialize major Wall Street investment banks, led by Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Pence had come out against the plan early, arguing that "economic freedom means the freedom to succeed26 and the freedom to fail.

Our country, the noblest country in the history of men, was based on the principle of individualism, the principle of man's "inalienable rights." It was a country where a man was free to seek his own happiness, to gain and produce; not to give up and renounce; to prosper, not to starve; to achieve, not to plunder; to hold as his highest possession a sense of his personal value, and as his highest virtue his self-respect.

When Jann Wenner, the hopelessly liberal founder of Rolling Stone magazine, was interviewing Bob Dylan in 2006, he was told that politicians cannot be counted on to solve problems. To him, the statement seemed absurd. "Who is going to solve them?" Wenner asked, incredulous. Dylan replied, "Our own selves2." He's exactly right. If we want things

Our nation was conceived in liberty and dedicated to protecting the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the individual, not of the collective or groups of special interests. The miracle of the Constitution is the simple genius of limited government and its singular devotion to protecting individual liberty.

Rahm Emanuel told the Wall Street Journal, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." There was a short window for the new Obama administration, "an opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before

THE SECOND MAJOR THEME running through the Tea Party movement is the call for personal responsibility. The founding documents built institutions that allowed for individuals to chase their dreams and be responsible for their own successes and failures. Tea Partiers value equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. For us, it is all about the rights of the individual over the collective.

As the Tea Party grew, the Democrats and their allies let their deepest insecurities get the best of them. The public was starting to understand! Accusations of Astroturf quickly gave way to uglier smears against the grassroots citizens who opposed big-government policies.

Big government is driven by two audacities: (1) the presumption that people are dumb and don't know what's good for them, (2) people are corrupt and dishonest; therefore it is incumbent upon the government to take money and spend it on citizens' behalf. On the other hand, the Tea Party has trust in the practical genius of the American people to be responsible for making decisions.

We've been involved in public policy debates long enough to know that when someone is losing an argument based on the facts, they try to change the subject. Thus liberals' hysterical reaction to the rising public opposition to their hostile government reboot of the American health care system. Thus Democrats' hostile attacks on the citizens who overwhelmed congressional town hall meetings over the August recess. It was "un-American.

THE PENDULUM OF POLITICS is always swinging. Republicans gain seats, Democrats win them back, and the struggle continues. The one thing that seems inevitable no matter the party in office is the continued growth of government. Occasionally, however, a fresh jolt of conservative energy interrupts that growth.

You cannot get ahead while you are getting even.

Make no mistake about it. These are not 'kookie' birds. Right now the greatest player, the big tent on the political scene in America, is called the Tea Party movement.

Hillary Clinton bothers me a lot. I realized the other day that her thoughts sound a lot like Karl Marx. She hangs around a lot of Marxists. All her friends are Marxists.

My own view would be to let Saddam bluster, let him rant and rave all he wants. As long as he behaves himself within his own borders, we should not be addressing any attack or resources against him.