Efficient Government Quotes & Sayings

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint. — Jon Stewart

In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself and having a deleterious effect on government service. — Leo Tolstoy

Obama has demonstrated no desire to make tough choices. Americans demand a more efficient, effective government, but his budget calls for more taxes and more spending. It employs deceptive accounting gimmicks but does nothing to tackle long-term entitlement problems, nothing to save Medicare or fix Social Security. — Reince Priebus

We've done a lot of work with our government businesses to ensure that we can get reasonable returns but at the same time that they can provide the services that they do provide to Tasmanians at the most efficient cost. — Peter Gutwein

Whether government finances its added spending by increasing taxes, by borrowing, or by inflating the currency, the added spending will be offset by reduced private spending. Furthermore, private spending is generally more efficient than the government spending that would replace it because people act more carefully when they spend their own money than when they spend other people's money. — Richard Wagner

But the point is: On the right, they're pretending that our "truthfulness" is what's really important to them. Which, ironically, is not true. What matters to them is discrediting anything that they believe harms their side. That is their prime directive. And unlike Kirk, they fuckin' stick with it. They don't just drop the protocol any time they feel like humping a green girl in a unitard. [video clip of Captain Kirk, pursuing a green girl in a unitard]

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.
~ Jon Stewart — Chris Smith

The gentlemen who wrote the Constitution were as suspicious of efficient government as they were wary of democracy, a "turbulence and a folly" that was associated with the unruly ignorance of an urban mob. — Lewis H. Lapham

The diseconomies of capitalism are treated as the public's responsibility. Corporate America skims the cream and leaves the bill for us to pay, then boasts about how productive and efficient it is and complains about our wasteful government. — Michael Parenti

I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can. — Barry M. Goldwater

A nascent economy needs a transparent and accountable government and an efficient civil service to help meet social needs. Its people need jobs and a belief in their country's future. A surfeit of aid has been shown to be unable to help achieve these goals. — Dambisa Moyo

Markets are nimble and efficient, gathering the collective but disbursed intelligence of the economy's players and communicating up-to-the-minute realities of prices, product availability, etc. Government is typically cumbersome, plodding, and slow. — Joel Miller

Americans want government that is leaner, more efficient, and less intrusive into their personal lives. — Rick Perry

Within the next generation I believe that the world's rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience. In other words, I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. — Aldous Huxley

Liberals don't love big government because they think it's efficient, compassionate, fair or even remotely useful. They support big government because they are guaranteed the support of nearly everyone who works for the government. — Ann Coulter

I think that if we get back to some basic fundamental principles, we can make sure that we resolve the issues. And I think that that's what the Tea Party was all about. It's getting back to a constitutional conservative government. And that is limited, but it's also effective and efficient. I think that that's what we'll be able to do. — Allen West

A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. — John Stuart Mill

I will continue my consistent record of voting for lower taxes, less spending and fewer regulations to make our government more effective and efficient while upholding our Constitution. — Roscoe Bartlett

Every government program needs to be more efficient. Instead of pointing out how other programs can tighten their belts, every program administrator must look inward to save money. — Michael Enzi

It's time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent. — Barack Obama

I am honored that my freshman class colleagues have put their trust in me to represent our historic class at the leadership table. The incoming freshman class of Representatives is large and diverse but we share many common goals including cutting wasteful spending, getting our economy back on track and making government smarter and more efficient. — Kristi Noem

Job creation requires a business friendly environment with a tax structure that is not punitive and a state government designed for efficient use of fewer tax dollars. — Kenneth Blackwell

The first lesson in civics is that efficient government begins at home. — Charles Evans Hughes

I have no doubt that aggressively going after wrongdoing can result in real improvement. Fewer wrongdoers in city government means more honest employees; it means better city services; it means more efficient government. And punishing wrongdoing can have a strong ripple effect that deters others from going down the wrong path. — David Hoffman

Our government is deeply disordered; its credit is impaired; its debt increasing; its expenditures extravagant and wasteful; its disbursements without efficient accountability; and its taxes (for duties are but taxes) enormous, unequal, and oppressive to the great producing classes of the country. — John C. Calhoun

Our society is monstrously disjunctive, at once so efficient in war and so inefficient in caring for the welfare of its members. It is frightening to see people rooting in garbage pails on streets, living in cardboard crates under bridges, while their government wages war. Even when there is an emergency in a household, decent parents do not forget to feed the children. — Anne Truitt

This is yet another product of the immensely stupid notion of privatizing the proper functions of government, which is based on the colossally stupid notion that private industry is more honest and more efficient than the public sector, which is itself based on the transcendentally stupid decision by too many states that it is better to light their balls on fire than raise taxes in order to pay for anything anywhere at any time. — Charles P. Pierce

clean, efficient, rational, and predictable government is a competitive advantage.26 — Graham Allison

Making government more efficient and more effective need not be a partisan issue. — Martin O'Malley

If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. — George Washington

The only way to make government more efficient is to make it smaller and to make it more local. — James Lankford

One thing for sure, Muhammad Ali stood his ground and refused to go thousands of miles from home to kill people who never did him any harm - a heroic stand. For this stand, he, like others, was arrested and faced imprisonment. What the government wants is efficient, sterile killers in immoral wars who can be awarded medals and paraded before cheering audiences as great patriotic defenders of our liberty. — Ron Paul

No longer does it make sense for an inventor to ask himself, "Can I make a better mousetrap?" because the threat is greater that the government might ban his mousetrap, however safe and efficient it is. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

In sum, economists (and those who listened to them) became overconfident in their preferred models of the moment: markets are efficient, financial innovation improves the risk-return trade-off, self-regulation works best, and government intervention is ineffective and harmful. They forgot about the other models. There was too much Fama, too little Shiller. The economics of the profession may have been fine, but evidently there was trouble with its psychology and sociology. — Dani Rodrik

Haitian rice farmers are quite efficient, but they can't compete with U.S. agribusiness that relies on a huge government subsidy, thanks to Ronald Reagan's free market enthusiasms. — Noam Chomsky

Every American knows there are government expenses that are absolutely not necessary. I disagree with the very idea that our government is spending $2.4 trillion in the most efficient manner. — Jeff Miller

Democracy, frequently defined as Individual greed, moderated by an efficient but not too zealous government. — Arthur C. Clarke

The greatest danger to liberty today comes from the men who are most needed and most powerful in modern government, namely, the efficient expert administrators exclusively concerned with what they regard as the public good. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

All that has been said of the importance of individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and
modes of conduct, involves, as of the same unspeakable importance, diversity of education. A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body. An education established and
controlled by the State should only exist, if it exist at all, as one among
many competing experiments, carried on for the purpose of example and stimulus, to keep the others up to a certain standard of excellence. — John Stuart Mill

It is necessary to have party organization if we are to have effective and efficient government. The only difference between a mob and a trained army is organization, and the only difference between a disorganized country and one that has the advantage of a wise and sound government is fundamentally a question of organization. — Calvin Coolidge

When I was director of the CIA, I knew that we had been - and I'm choosing my words very carefully here - effective in our expansion. We really had - expansion of government agencies and expansion of use of contractors. Effective, we were; efficient, we weren't. And so, as director of the CIA, I went after the inefficiencies part. — Michael Hayden

You know, in a workplace, when you shrink the size of a workforce, there is pain there. But there is no question: we have a government that we can no longer afford. That is the cold, hard fact. So we have to make this more efficient. We have to sunset programs that no longer work. We have to eliminate waste and fraud. We must do this. — Meg Whitman

Motorists who want to save money on gas will demand and buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. We should not limit their freedom with more government regulations. — Jim DeMint

We can only restore faith in government if the state itself becomes an efficient, effective and transparent ally of the people. Bureaucratic inefficiencies, abuses of power and the misappropriation of public funds must end. — Victor Ponta

We need a government that is what we are at our best. Smart, efficient, pragmatic and compassionate. — Deval Patrick

People who never seen to learn claim the government can be made more efficient. — James Cook

An efficient militia is authorized and contemplated by the Constitution and required by the spirit and safety of free government. — James Madison

You can't trust the government to do anything right-except, of course, to conspire and cover up. Then it becomes diabolically efficient. The very people who are wildest for government conspiracies are often the same people who believe the government is incapable of delivering the mail efficiently. — Richard White

Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship. — Harry Truman

Between government, business, and the public, there is a triangular community of interest. Clearly, it is in business' interest to shape its behavior to prevailing public values; it is more efficient to do so than not to do so. It is also clear that government is the high-cost alternative through which public values are imposed on corporations that do not accurately perceive these values. — Juanita M. Kreps

I don't want a lot of bureaucracy ... I want to run state government the same way we run a campaign - efficient, effective and victorious. — Charlie Crist

I'm not a 'messiah' coming to change Washington. I don't come with a political background, so I think it's part of my responsibility to raise my hand and say 'Why?' Folks don't just want smaller government; they want an efficient small government. — James Lankford

I really don't think our school system is an evil borg force. It's sort of like the government. It's not even efficient enough to be a borg of total evil, even if it wanted to be. — Sandra Tsing Loh

An efficient government is dangerous in the hands of the wrong man. Sadly, the right sort of man never seems interested in the job. — Nathan Myhrvold

It's businesses versus big government. We don't need big government. We need a more efficient, lean government, and that's exactly the kind of government we intend to deliver. — Sher Valenzuela

Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system ... The central feature of the American constitutional system - the separation of powers - exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers. — James Q. Wilson

Our message will be that we're going to make federal government buildings a model - an energy-efficient model - and also start matching grants for cities and counties so that they can also do the same with their government buildings. — Barbara Boxer

During the socialist period, the government became too big. That created a crowding-out effect in the private economy, and it gave everybody the need to pay more taxes in order to finance this big government. We are against big government. We want a smaller and more efficient government. — Antonis Samaras

[the federal] government [has no authority] to deliver a service, ... and there's no evidence to show that government has ever been efficient [at] delivering ... service. — Ron Paul

If a woman can by careful selection of a father, and nourishment of herself produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed in the undertaking by herself, or by the father, of by a speculative capitalist, or by a new department of , say, the Royal Dublin Society, or (as at present) by the War Office maintaining her 'on the strength' and authority under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances have a year's leave of absence on full salary, or by the central government, does not matter provided the results be satisfactory. — George Bernard Shaw

Morgan then formed the U.S. Steel Corporation, combining Carnegie's corporation with others. He sold stocks and bonds for $1,300,000,000 (about 400 million more than the combined worth of the companies) and took a fee of 150 million for arranging the consolidation. How could dividends be paid to all those stockholders and bondholders? By making sure Congress passed tariffs keeping out foreign steel; by closing off competition and maintaining the price at $28 a ton; and by working 200,000 men twelve hours a day for wages that barely kept their families alive. And so it went, in industry after industry - shrewd, efficient businessmen building empires, choking out competition, maintaining high prices, keeping wages low, using government subsidies. These industries were the first beneficiaries of the welfare state. — Howard Zinn

Ask anyone on Social Security if their check comes on time every month. Like clockwork. And it comes through the so-called dilapidated U.S. mail. My dad's check literally will come on the same day every month. The government has been quite good and efficient at creating a number of systems. — Michael Moore

Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't. — Bill Moyers

To do that, the NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government, or someone that they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting YOUR communications to do so. — Edward Snowden

Trying to get government to be as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow. — Walter E. Williams

From cutting back on state contracts to reducing the number of state cars, We're making state government smaller, smarter, more efficient, and more accountable. — Jim Doyle

What we need, we are told every day, is more and better leadership. But what this demand involves is a closer and closer approximation to fascism. The fascists alone have evolved an efficient form of leadership: efficient leadership is fascism. — Herbert Read

The U.S. government needs to learn from successful private businesses that run an effective and efficient operation in serving their customers and outwitting their competitors. — Newton Lee

We have all kinds of government compensation systems that are much more efficient than the lawyers. — John Stossel

I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican. — Meghan McCain

Chaos and ineptitude are anti-human; but so too is a superlatively efficient government, equipped with all the products of a highly developed technology. — Aldous Huxley

With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries ... What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient. — Lee Kuan Yew

A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns. — Henry Adams

In order to spur economic growth we need to put the brakes on out of control spending, lower Ohioans tax burden and create a most efficient and effective government. — Kenneth Blackwell