Hyperinflation can take virtually your entire life’s savings, without the government having to bother raising the official tax rate at all.

You have to have a certain realism that government is a pretty blunt instrument, and without the constant attention of highly qualified people with the right metrics, it will fall into not doing things very well.

The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would steal them away.

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.

Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

I don’t think that a Justice should have uppermost in her mind, ‚A Democratic president appointed me, so I must leave to be sure that another Democratic president can appoint my successor.‘

I have been very happy in the House of Representatives.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.

I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate whenever the Government assumes a freer aspect and the laws favor a subdivision of Property.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, 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.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.

We must always remember that America is a great nation today not because of what government did for people but because of what people did for themselves and for one another.

I’m completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we – we own this country. We – we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

I’m the president of the United States. I’m not the emperor of the United States.

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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!

Even if the politics needed doesn’t exist today, we still need to use our voices to make sure that the people in power are focused on the right things. Because this is a democracy, and in a democracy, people are the ones who run the country.

Most members of Congress are politicians. They’re bores.

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

There is no more independence in politics than there is in jail.

How can a president not be an actor?

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

When I was president, I announced and I still maintain that I can live with Roe v. Wade. I did everything I possibly could as president under that ruling, which I don’t think ought to be changed, to minimize the need for abortions. I think every abortion is a result of a horrible series of errors on the part of people involved.

In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

Scientists are not delinquents. Our work has changed the conditions in which men live, but the use made of these changes is the problem of governments, not of scientists.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

If you believe that tax policy has nothing to do with the economy, then you’re pretty much like a rock, only dumber.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

How can we help President Obama?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?

If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.

True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.

The best government is that which teaches us to govern ourselves.

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.

I loved being Secretary of State, that’s probably evident to everyone who watched me.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

Washington isn’t a city, it’s an abstraction.

By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle?

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

People clinging to job security, savings, retirement plans, and other relics will be the ones financially-ravaged from 2010-2020, the most volatile world-changing decade in history.