Quotes About Government

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

The smaller the unit of government and the more restricted the functions assigned government, the less likely it is that its actions will reflect special interests rather than the general interest.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

The family, rather than the individual, has always been and remains today the basic building block of our society, though its hold has clearly been weakening—one of the most unfortunate consequences of the growth of government paternalism.

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

History only suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

None of this means that government does not have a very real function. Indeed, the tragedy is that because government is doing so many things it ought not to be doing, it performs the functions it ought to be performing badly. The basic functions of government are to defend the nation against foreign enemies, to prevent coercion of some individuals by others within the country, to provide a means of deciding on our rules, and to adjudicate disputes.3

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficial. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." —Justice Louis Brandeis

The role of government just considered is to do something that the market cannot do for itself, namely, to determine, arbitrate, and enforce the rules of the game.

There is all the difference in the world, however, between two kinds of assistance through government that seem superficially similar: first, 90 percent of us agreeing to impose taxes on ourselves in order to help the bottom 10 percent, and second, 80 percent voting to impose taxes on the top 10 percent to help the bottom 10 percent—William Graham Sumner's famous example of B and C deciding what D shall do for A.

Abraham Lincoln talked about a government of the people, by the people, for the people. What we now have is a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, including the legislators who have become bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.

Inflation is taxation without legislation

Nor do the spokesmen for these organizations ever explain why, if the public school system is doing such a splendid job, it needs to fear competition from nongovernmental, competitive schools or, if it isn't, why anyone should object to its "destruction.

The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs—except programs that benefit other people. The

The government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth, including illegal drugs, than it has to tell me what comes out of my mouth.

Commies love concrete.

I love B.C., but you know what taxes are like in Canada.

It is the church's responsibility, the government's responsibility, and the personal responsibility of every one of us to love.

Englishmen are said to love their laws; - that is the reason, I suppose, they give us so many of them, and in different editions.

England does not love coalitions.

I love the Constitution and government of this land, but I hate the damned rascals that administer the government.

I arose and spoke substantially as follows: ... I love the government and the constitution of the United States, but I do not love the damned rascals who administer the government.

I'm into politics, and I love watching the heavier news magazine shows.