People don't start wars, governments do.

...100% of what is collected is absorbed solely by interest on the Federal Debt...all individual income tax revenues are gone before one nickel is spent on the services taxpayers expect from government.

I'll be like Scarlett O'Hara-I'll think about it tomorrow.

Professional politicians like to talk about the value of experience in government. Nuts! The only experience you gain in politics is how to be political.

It's hard, when you're up to your armpits in alligators, to remember you came here to drain the swamp.

Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini's success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say "But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.

The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom.

Outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or economically as the private sector.

It is the tendency of Government to grow, for practices and programs to become the nearest thing to eternal life we'll see on this earth.

When the Commander-in-Chief of a nation finds it necessary to order employees of the government or agencies of the government to do things that would technically break the law, he has to be able to declare it legal for them to do that.

Yes, deficits are a problem. I've been saying so for more than a quarter of a century now. But the problem is not the size of the deficit, it's the size of government's claim on our economy.

We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.

We could say they government spend like drunken sailors, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors, because the sailors are spending their own money.

It doesn't require expropriation or confiscation of private property or business to impose socialism on a people. What does it mean whether you hold the deed or the title to your business or property if the government holds the power of life and death over that business or property?

We were poor when I was young but the difference was that the government didn't come around telling you you were poor.

When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation. Make no mistake about it, inflation is a tax and not by accident.

When those who are governed do too little, those who govern can - and often will - do too much.

Nothing lasts longer than a temporary government program.

Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: 'We the people.' 'We the people' tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us. 'We the people' are the driver, the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. Almost all the world's 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.

Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx-first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother.

Accepting a government grant with its accompanying rules is like marrying a girl and finding out her entire family is moving in with you before the honeymoon.

Government is never more dangerous than when our desire to have it help us blinds us to its great power to harm us.

Government Steals from the needy and gives to the greedy

We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us.

If some among you fear taking a stand because you are afraid of reprisals from customers, clients, or even government, recognize that you are just feeding the crocodile hoping he'll eat you last.

We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars: It is better to be here [in Europe] ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.

Millions of individuals making their own decisions in the marketplace will always allocate resources better than any centralized government planning process.

Governments don't control things. A government can't control the economy without controlling people.

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!

No matter how big and powerful government gets, and the many services it provides, it can never take the place of volunteers.

Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it's not my intention to do away with government. It is rather to make it work - work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.

The best view of big government is in the rearview mirror as we leave it behind.

I don't believe in a government that protects us from ourselves.

The federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

People do not make wars; governments do.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

For a time, we forgot the American dream isn't one of making government bigger, it's keeping faith with the mighty spirit of free people under God

We've gone astray from first principles. We've lost sight of the rule that individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything that we've accomplished. Government's first duty is to protect the people, not run their lives.

Government is not a solution to our problem government is the problem.

If we get the federal government out of the classroom, maybe we'll get God back in.

Respect for human rights is not social work; it is not merely an act of compassion. It is the first obligation of government and the source of its legitimacy.

Free enterprise is a rough and competitive game. It is a hell of a lot better than a government monopoly.

[Our goal] is to help revive America's traditional values: faith, family, neighborhood, work and freedom. Government has no business enforcing these values but neither must it seek, as it did in the recent past, to suppress or replace them. That only robbed us of our tiller and set us adrift. Helping to restore these values will bring new strength, direction and dignity to our lives and to the life of our nation. It's on these values that we'll best build our future.

All systems are capitalist. It's just a matter of who owns and controls the capital -- ancient king, dictator, or private individual. We should properly be looking at the contrast between a free market system where individuals have the right to live like kings if they have the ability to earn that right and government control of the market system such as we find today in socialist nations.

Remember that every government service, every offer of government - financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom... In the days to come, whenever a voice is raised telling you to let the government do it, analyze very carefully to see whether the suggested service is worth the personal freedom which you must forgo in return for such service.

Some years ago, the federal government declared war on poverty, and poverty won.

Governments don't reduce deficits by raising taxes on the people; governments reduce deficits by controlling spending and stimulating new wealth.