Government has laid its hand on health, housing, farming, industry, commerce, education, and to an ever-increasing degree interferes with the people's right to know. Government tends to grow, government programs take on weight and momentum as public servants say, always with the best of intentions. But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector of the economy.

Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant, slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us back -- with quiet courage and common sense; with undying faith that in this nation under God the future will be ours, for the future belongs to the free.

The people's instincts are still right. You see them come to the rescue of someone-a child who falls down a well-hundreds of people rush to help, and labor and equipment are volunteered without any thought of who's going to pay for it. This is a basic feeling in Americans. They don't stand back in such a circumstance and ask what the government's going to do about it.

The economic welfare of all our people must ultimately stem not from government programs, but from the wealth created by a vigorous private sector.

If you owe the bank $10,000 you have a problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000 they have a problem. After all is said and done, more is said than done. Government does not solve problems; it subsidizes them.

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose.

Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted, it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy.

The same government that requires a taxpaying citizen to document every statement on his tax return decrees that questioning a welfare applicant demeans and humiliates him.

We must remove government's smothering hand from where it does harm; we must seek to revitalize the proper functions of government. We do these things to set loose again the energy and the ingenuity of the American people. We do these things to reinvigorate those social and economic institutions which serve as a buffer and a bridge between the individual and the state - and which remain the real source of our progress as a people.

Those who advocate more and more government regulation have been experimenting for 40 years, trying to create an economic system in which everyone can somehow be made more prosperous by the toil of someone else.

Free enterprise has done more to reduce poverty than all the government programs dreamed up by Democrats.

We are going to put an end to the notion that the American taxpayer exists to fund the Federal Government.

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

Every dollar the federal government does not take from us, every decision it does not make for us, will make our economy stronger, our lives more abundant, our future more free.

For three decades, we have sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

Government is not the answer to the problem - it IS the problem.

The American taxing structure, the purpose of which was to serve the people, began instead to serve the insatiable appetite of government. If you will forgive me, you know someone has once likened government to a baby. It is an alimentary canal with an appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.

Were not cutting the budget simply for the sake of sounder financial management. This is only a first step toward returning power to the states and communities, only a first step toward reordering the relationship between citizen and government.

Dreams became issues of East versus West. Hopes became political rhetoric. Progress became a search for power and domination. Somewhere the truth was lost that people don't make war, governments do.

You know, it was only a generation ago that actors couldn't be buried in the churchyard.

There were so many candidates on the platform that there were not enough promises to go around.

I believe Moses was 80 when God first commissioned him for public service.

I was alarmed at my doctor's report: He said I was sound as a dollar.

I don't have too much time for fiction.

I have come to the conclusion that the 22nd Amendment [limiting the presidency to two terms] was a mistake. Shouldn't the people have the right to vote for someone as many times as they want to vote for him?

If we don't want to see the map of Central America covered in a sea of red, eventually lapping at our own borders, we must act now.

Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.

This administration is totally colorblind.

Why should the government subsidize intellectual curiosity?

Our problems are both acute and chronic, yet all we hear from those in positions of leadership are the same tired proposals for more government tinkering, more meddling and more control---all of which led us to this state in the first place... We must have the clarity of vision to see the difference between what is essential and what is merely desirable, and then the courage to bring our government back under control and make it acceptable to the people.

Almost all the worlds' constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.

This is not to say that the government should confiscate from the "haves" and bestow upon the "have-nots", beyond the requirements of a compassionate welfare program to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. Far from it. But it is to say that our duty is to foster a strong, vibrant wealth-producing economy which operates in such a way that new additions to wealth accrue to those who presently have little or no ownership stake in their country.

Simple fairness dictates that government must not raise taxes on families struggling to pay their bills.

I know I'm not in government anymore. In fact I'm out of work.

I have always thought of government as a kind of organism with an insatiable appetite for money, whose natural state is to grow forever unless you do something to starve it.

Our whole system of government is based on "We the people," but if we the people don't pay attention to what's going on, we have no right to bellyache or squawk when things go wrong.

The closest thing to eternal life on earth is a Government Program

Are you willing to spend time studying the issues, making yourself aware, and then conveying that information to family and friends? Will you resist the temptation to get a government handout for your community?

No longer must government be allowed to ride roughshod, absorbing the people's wealth, usurping their rights, and crushing their spirit.

Deficits, as I've often said, aren't caused by too little taxing, they're caused by too much spending. Presidents can't appropriate a dollar of tax payers money, only Congressmen can; and Congress is susceptible to all sorts of influences that have nothing to do with good government.

People are tired of wasteful government programs and welfare chiselers, and they are angry about the constant spiral of taxes and government regulations, arrogant bureaucrats, and public officials who think all of mankind's problems can be solved by throwing the taxpayers dollars at them.

The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

History shows that when the taxes of a nation approach about 20 percent of the people's income, there begins to be a lack of respect for government.... When it reaches 25 percent, there comes an increase in lawlessness.

The government is currently experiencing withdrawal symptoms, and we musn't feed the habit by injecting more tax dollars into it.

We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

All of us should remember that the federal government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.

Nations crumble from within when the citizenry asks of government those things which the citizenry might better provide for itself.

There seems to be an increasing awareness of something we Americans have known for some time - that the ten most dangerous words in the English language are "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."

Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring democracy the tolerance it requires to survive