Quotes About Government

This power became addicting to many elected officials who, instead of going to Washington, DC, for a brief time to represent their constituency, wanted to hold their positions for extended periods of time — even for life. This growing power and the progressive intrusion of government into the lives of the people was so insidious that it went largely undetected.

Breaking cycles of dependency, establishing cordial relationships between people of differing economic means, and reestablishing sound values and principles in our society can serve only to strengthen the fabric of our nation, which is what any government should want to do and which clearly promotes the general welfare.

When a government turns from following the will of its people to willing its people to follow — acting according to its own prerogatives — it ceases to be a representative government and instead has transformed into something else.

Governmental programs are often faceless and unsustainable. Handouts create more dependency in the populace, decreasing overall societal productivity and depleting the resources of the agencies providing the handouts. The taxpayer base decreases, the dependent population increases, and taxpayer money runs out.

Thomas Jefferson: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."1

Anytime you give to government the responsibility and authority to provide government-made jobs, old-age financial security, "free" health care, and "free" education and indoctrination of children, it will control the lives of the people who live under its jurisdiction, and individual liberty and freedom of choice are sacrificed.

Many in Europe saw an opportunity to escape the oppressive and overbearing governmental systems under which they languished, and these people emigrated in droves, bringing with them a strong determination to make a better life for themselves and their offspring, unfettered by oppressive overseers disguised as government.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," James Madison pointed out, "the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

As long as you have broad representation from many parts of society, representative government works extremely well. And it works even better when the representatives serve for only a short period of time and return to their communities, leaving a spot for someone else from the community to become the next representative.

John Adams when he said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

I do not believe that the founding fathers intended for a fourth branch of government to emerge — that of special interest groups.

The founders realized that a gigantic government would require increasingly large amounts of resources from the people in the form of taxes, and that the people would consequently expect more from such a government since they were giving it so much of their money.

When the government becomes large and intrusive and feels that it has the right to as much of the resources owned by the people as it wants, then we have clearly strayed away from some of the foundational principles of this nation.

They decreed that the American government always be controlled by the will of the people, not the people by the will of the government.

Under the Constitution, our government follows the model set out by Thomas Jefferson: "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

A gigantic, bloated government has to keep itself busy in order to justify its existence; hence, you have more regulations and meddling in the affairs of the people, whether they request it, need it, or not.

I believe the logical approach would be to have each governmental agency and department trim its budget by 10 percent — with no exceptions. In each subsequent year, another 10 percent decrease would be required and would continue as long as necessary to bring the budget back into balance.

The Constitution of the United States was written in such a way as to restrain government growth and power if there was the will to adhere to it, but unfortunately many of our legislators feel that the Constitution is outdated and largely irrelevant to today's society.

With all of their backbreaking hard work, they felt it unfair to have such a significant portion of the fruits of their labors confiscated by a government that neither represented their interests nor respected their freedom.

Promoting the general welfare does mean that the government should do things that enhance the lives of its citizens. The government should build and maintain infrastructure that supports population growth, business, and self-improvement endeavors. It should not, however, meddle in the affairs of all the citizens or control every aspect of their lives, as is done in many communist and socialist countries.

Between federal, state, local, sales, and real estate taxes, more than half of my income goes to pay taxes. Since that is the case, you might say that I work for the government. This is certainly not the kind of situation that was envisioned by the founding fathers.

it is time for us as a nation to step back and ask ourselves, who is really being treated unfairly — unionized government workers or taxpayers who have to support unaffordable benefits?

government that continues to tax the rich until there are no more rich, and then begins to tax everyone else without ever curbing its growth or its appetite for money. Eventually it destroys itself.

we lose tens of billions of dollars to Medicare and Medicaid fraud every year. This is something we have not been able to control, either because we don't care very much and view other issues as much more important, or because we are incompetent