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.

One of the peculiarities of Delhi is that the term ‚reform‘ is associated only with passing of laws in Parliament. In fact, the most important reforms are those needed, without new laws, at various level of the government, in work practices and procedures.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting.

The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton but wouldn’t let them into the family brokerage business.

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.

Cancer is still a word that strikes fear into people’s hearts, producing a deep sense of powerlessness. But today it is possible to find out through a blood test whether you are highly susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer, and then take action.

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.

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

If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

I love being in the United States Senate.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

An individual’s refusal to carry out the criminal acts of his government sets the stage, in the most effective way possible, for the attempt to demonstrate the criminal nature of these acts.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Which government is the best? The one that teaches us to govern ourselves.

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.

If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking… is freedom.

This country has come to feel the same when Congress is in session as when the baby gets hold of a hammer.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

That our government should have been maintained in its original form from its establishment until now is not much to be wondered at. It had many props to support it through that period, which now are decayed and crumbled away. Through that period, it was felt by all to be an undecided experiment; now, it is understood to be a successful one.

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

I have been a firm believer in the federal structure of our country as enshrined in the Constitution.

Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

There might be some serious fun in politics.

The Bill of Rights is not an a la carte menu.

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.

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.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

To some degree it matters who’s in office, but it matters more how much pressure they’re under from the public.

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

Read my lips: no new taxes.

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger.

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

Information, education, skills, healthcare, livelihood, financial inclusion, small and village enterprises, opportunities for women, conservation of natural resources, distributed clean energy – entirely new possibilities have emerged to change the development model.

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

Man is not free unless government is limited.

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

The biggest problem that we have is that California is being run now by special interests. All of the politicians are not anymore making the moves for the people, but for special interests and we have to stop that.

No Government can be long secure without a formidable Opposition.

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

The question really is, are you improving the world? And you can do that in many models. You can do that in government, you can do that in a nonprofit, and you can do it in commercial enterprise.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

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

In the political system, we are a team; politics and bureaucracy, we are a team. The politicians, bureaucrats and the people, we are a team.

To restore the trust of the people, we must reform the way the government operates.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other’s speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in.