Too Much Government Quotes & Sayings

Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions. — Peter F. Drucker

We have too much legislating by clamor, by tumult, by pressure. Representative government ceases when outside influence of any kind is substituted for the judgment of the representative. — Calvin Coolidge

Before they got vengeful, conservatives had some useful points to make about welfare. Government 'help' is too often guilt-assuaging gesture. It creates layers of wasteful bureaucracy. Too much help of the wrong sort creates a culture of dependency that swamps our ability to provide. — Donella Meadows

Laws could be passed to keep the leader of a government from getting too much power. — Thomas More

The House of Lords, architecturally, is a magnificent room, and the dignity, quiet, and repose of the scene made me unwillingly acknowledge that the Senate of the United States might possibly improve its manners. Perhaps in our desire for simplicity, absence of title, or badge of office we may have thrown over too much. — M. E. W. Sherwood

You can talk about capitalism and communism and all that sort of thing, but the important thing is the struggle everybody is engaged in to get better living conditions, and they are not interested too much in government. — Bernard Baruch

We must move from revenue-neutral to revenue-reducing tax reform, because the federal government spends far too much money. — Carly Fiorina

The American Constitution was designed to make it hard to have too much government. — Daniel Patrick Moynihan

People who know nothing about advertising, nothing about pharmaceuticals, and nothing about economics have been loudly proclaiming that the drug companies spend too much on advertising - and demanding that the government pass laws based on their ignorance. — Thomas Sowell

What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing! I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds speaking, thence to acting is often but a single step. But how irrevocable & tremendous! What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves, and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal & falacious! Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend. — George Washington

There's no reason to raise taxes. Taxes should be lower ... The problem we have is that government spends too much, not that taxes are too low. — Grover Norquist

I do not think that the government, under the guise of some phony, alarmist, pseudo-scientific rhetoric, should attempt to control the evolution of consciousness. After all, if these things truly are consciousness-expanding, it doesn't take too much intelligence to realize that it is the absence of consciousness that is causing our flirtation with extinction and planetary disaster. — Terence McKenna

I'm a bad, inconsistent person, but at least I'm not a member of the Tea Party griping incoherently about too much government, but flashing my Medicare card every other day to a doctor because I'm 400 pounds overweight. — George Singleton

Government is just spending too much money. — Bob Schaffer

Every dollar I can't commit to my company that's paid in taxes is paying a government that I believe is too big and doing way too much that I don't want done. — Curt Schilling

The majority of Afghans do not see the Americans as foreign occupiers who must be defeated. Instead, they are hungry for the Americans to step up and help them make their country safer, their government cleaner and their economy stronger. They are disappointed because the international community has done too little, not too much. — Gayle Tzemach Lemmon

We currently have a government planning to go to Mars, heal broken marriages, and build bridges to nowhere - and also one that cannot wage a war competently, cannot respond to a hurricane adequately, and cannot enforce borders. Is it too much to ask that it get the basic things right before embarking on grandiose schemes? — Andrew Sullivan

Everyone on the Commission assumes that 9/11 resulted from a lack of government action. No one in Washington has raised the question of whether our shortcomings, brought to light by 9/11, could have been a result of too much government. — Ron Paul

A majority of all defectors who voted Labour in 2010 but for a different party in 2015 said Ed Miliband had helped push them to another party. For those switching to the Tories, the second biggest reason was the fear that a Labour government would spend and borrow too much. — Michael Ashcroft

And of course the World needs more love, but we need to be clear on what form that love will take. Sometimes love requires killing its object, to put it out of its misery or protect others. Sometimes love requires incarcerating its object to protect it or others. Sometimes love requires taxing and regulating its objects to protect and serve them. Sometimes love requires helping its object to help itself. Sometimes love requires giving its object a gift. But all of these are aspects of love, not merely the last, most popular example. I send love too, and my love takes many forms. My love varies with its objects. Yes, the World needs much more love. — Robert Peate

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

We have seen a central government promote the power of labor-union bosses, and in turn be supported by that power, until it has become entirely too much a government of and for one class, which is exactly what our Founding Fathers wanted most to prevent. — Robert W. Welch Jr.

And you can't have a prosperous economy when the government is way overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over regulating and restricting free trade. It just can't be done. — Arthur Laffer

The government has to be on the side of the people if the corporations take too much power. — Ian Bremmer

Limiting the power of government, in order to liberate the individual, was the great American revolutionary insight. Too much cooperation, avoiding conflict from ordinary people, these things aren't acceptable in America although they may suit China, Indonesia, Britain, or Germany just fine. In America the absence of conflict is a sign of regression toward a global mean, hardly progress by our lights if you've seen much of the governance of the rest of the world where common people are crushed like annoying insects if they argue. — John Taylor Gatto

Clarissa will be bereaved, deeply lonely, but she will not die. She will be too much in love with life, with London. Virginia imagines someone else, yes, someone strong of body but frail-minded; someone with a touch of genius, of poetry, ground under by the wheels of the world, by war and government, by doctors; a someone who is, technically speaking insane, because that person sees meaning everywhere, knows that trees are sentient beings and sparrows sing in Greek. Yes, someone like that. Clarissa, sane Clarissa -exultant, ordinary Clarissa - will go on, loving London, loving her life of ordinary pleasures, and someone else, a deranged poet, a visonary, will be the one to die. — Michael Cunningham

No, this is pretty much the same version I read," I said, because it felt too damn late to back down. I imagine that from time to time some similar situation has led governments to declare war." pg.57 — Helen Oyeyemi

We want our government to protect us, to make sure something like 9/11 never happens again. We quickly moved to give law enforcement more power to do this. But that now begs the question, did we move to fast? Did we give too much power away? I don't have the answer. — Michael Connelly

We can talk about corporations all day long but my goal is to help the middle class, somebody who makes too much to be on government assistance but still lives paycheck to paycheck. — Lindsey Graham

As it stands today we have too many lawyers in government - many of whom are very smart and decent people - but they are not immune from acting like lawyers. Consequently, we have far too much regulatory legislation. Also, what do many lawyers learn in law school? They learn to win by hook or by crook; it doesn't matter how you fight as long as you win. Imagine a roomful of Democratic and Republican lawyers, each with one overriding goal to win, and this certainly helps one understand the distasteful partisan politics that characterizes Congress today. — Ben Carson

Be wary of those propagating too much about liberty, ideology, and civility; they just might be oppressors in the making. — Aniruddha Sastikar

Mexico is sex and Canada is mind. There is much about Canada that I find admirable - the treatment of immigrants, for example, particularly those from Central America during the recent civil wars there. But there is confusion too: I know of Croatian Nazis who are subsidized by the Canadian government to maintain their racist culture. There is Canada, trying to sustain diversity without knowing exactly what it's doing. — Richard Rodriguez

That's not how national security works ... I don't care what the Supreme Court said 30 years ago or what some judge said 15 minutes ago. This is America, and our government is collecting way too damn much data on we the private citizens! — Mark Levin

There's a true schizophrenia where if you say to voters, you know, do you think the federal government spends too much money and they should spend less, they say yeah, absolutely. Then you name specific things, like Pell grants for students and they say, no, not that. How 'bout NIH, medical research funding? Nah, you really shouldn't cut that. And pretty soon you've proved that what the American public is against is arithmetic. — Bill Gates

In America ... who is to stop congress from spending too much money. They will not stop themselves, that is certain. Everybody has to think about that now. Who is to stop them. — Gertrude Stein

Those characters wherein fear predominates over hope may apprehend too much from ... instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience. — Thomas Jefferson

Washington was taken by surprise by the Egyptian revolution because policy experts focused too much on Mubarak and his government, and too little on the 'voice of the people.' — Cynthia P. Schneider

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion - a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long - that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem. — Richard M. Nixon

You are of course right, Yanis. These targets that they insist on can't work. But, you must understand that we have put too much into this programme. We cannot go back on it. Your credibility depends on accepting and working within this programme.2 So, there I had it. The head of the IMF was telling the finance minister of a bankrupt government that the policies imposed upon his country couldn't work. Not that it would be hard to make them work. Not that the probability of them working was low. No, she was acknowledging that, come hell or high water, they couldn't work. With — Yanis Varoufakis

Unfortunately, there's a lot of people in high places who understand the science but don't like where the policy leads them: too much government control. — David Titley

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. — Ronald Reagan

Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own. — Simon Bolivar

One of the questions I have been asked many times since this story broke is this: Now that the facts are out there, what can we do? My answer, depressing and cynical as it may be, is always the same. Not much. Not now. And certainly not until the American public and its Congressional representatives regain control of the CIA and shred the curtain of secrecy that keeps us from discovering these crimes of state until its too late.
Perhaps when the government officials who presided over these outrages are safely in their crypts, and their apologists and cheerleaders are buried woth them, future historians can finally call these men to account for the miseries they caused. Even if that's all that ever happens, it will be fitting and just, because the favorable judgment of history is ultimately what they craved. — Gary Webb

What would it be like if every nation - from the isles in the South to the Terris hills in the North - were united under a single government? What wonders could be achieved, what progress could be made, if mankind were to permanently set aside its squabblings and join together? It is too much, I suppose, to even hope for. A single, unified empire of man? It could never happen. — Brandon Sanderson

I believe that government is too large, costs too much, spends too much, and has too much regulatory power in our lives. — Tim Walberg

When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government. — John Stuart Mill

Governments never do any great good things from mere principle, from mere love of justice ... You expect too much of human nature when you expect that. — Susan B. Anthony

The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything. — Mark Steyn

We need a government, not politics. Because there's too much politics. Of course there should be debate. But there seems to be so much pettiness and not enough good faith. It is civilized to agree to disagree, and this idea is slowly disintegrating. The great statesmen of the past knew this, and I think it helps drive civilization. — Daphne Guinness

I think everybody should have the choice [with drugs] the same as helmets. You should be able to say whether you want to wear one or not. By making drugs illegal, the government is intervening into our lives a little too much. — Sonny Barger

This book scratches an old itch. Despite being the level of government that is closest to the people and has so much impact on our quality of life, most people don't know too much about how their local governments operate and even less about what it's like to manage a city or county. Occasionally, a city manager character appears in a novel, movie, or TV show but almost always in a mocking or denigrating fashion that belies the professionalism that is more the norm. — John Thompson

We repose an unwise confidence in any government, or in any men, when we invest them officially with too much, or an unnecessary quantity of, discretionary power. — Thomas Paine

If you think communism is too hard a word - necessitates for government to be your god. And for government to be your God, they need to destroy the concept of God. That's why communism and evolution go hand in hand. Evolution is one of the strongest tools of Marxism. Because if they can convince you that you came from a monkey, it's much easier to convince you that God does not exist. — Rafael Cruz

If you have the power to hit people over the head whenever you want, you don't have to trouble yourself too much figuring out what they think is going on, and therefore, generally speaking, you don't. Hence the sure-fire way to simplify social arrangements, to ignore the incredibly complex play of perspectives, passions, insights, desires, and mutual understandings that human life is really made of, is to make a rule and threaten to attack anyone who breaks it. This is why violence has always been the favored recourse of the stupid: it is the one form of stupidity to which it is almost impossible to come up with an intelligent response. It is also of course the basis of the state. — David Graeber

People are fed up with Labour for taking them for granted for far too long, they are fed up of too much spin, and the people of Dunfermline and West Fife have spoken for the rest of the country with their views on the Labour government. — Willie Rennie

Keep your head down, Edward. Those that see too much quickly find themselves seeing nothing at all. — Jasper Fforde

Strictly speaking, it probably is not "necessary" for the federal government to tax anyone directly; it could simply print the money it needs. However, that would be too bold a stroke, for it would then be obvious to all what kind of counterfeiting operation the government is running. The present system combining taxation and inflation is akin to watering the milk; too much water and the people catch on. — Ron Paul

It's risky to allow radiation to constantly go up into the atmosphere. The main criticism of this approach of entombing it is that it would cost too much, involve too many resources and people. But think of the cost of having all the crops impounded by the government, all the milk being thrown into the river, people's livelihoods destroyed. — Michio Kaku

Good constitutions are formed upon a comparison of the liberty of the individual with the strength of government: If the tone of either be too high, the other will be weakened too much. It is the happiest possible mode of conciliating these objects, to institute one branch peculiarly endowed with sensibility, another with knowledge and firmness. Through the opposition and mutual control of these bodies, the government will reach, in its regular operations, the perfect balance between liberty and power. — Alexander Hamilton

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much. — Ronald Reagan

The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution. — Ronald Reagan

I am an anarchist in my personal life. I try to live my life in a way that I don't need cops or baby-sitters to keep me from infringing on others. But I don't feel we have evolved far enough as a species to make anarchy work in society itself. We still need government to transfer the wealth from those who have too much to those who have too little, to make sure important projects get done, and keep territorial humans from screwing over and killing each other. — Jello Biafra

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority. — John Roberts

[T]ry not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda. — L. Neil Smith

We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much. — Ronald Reagan

Preaching has always been the business of the Asiatics. The Western people are grand in organisation, social institutions, armies, governments, etc.; but when it comes to preaching religion, they cannot come near the Asiatic, whose business it has been all the time, and he knows it, and he does not use too much machinery. — Swami Vivekananda

A majority of people in these surveys also said that America gives too much aid
but when they were asked how much America should give, the median answers ranged from 5 percent to 10 percent of government spending. In other words, people wanted foreign aid 'cut' to an amount five to ten times greater than the United States actually gives! — Peter Singer

The American people think the government in Washington is too big. That it spends too much. And - and that it's totally out of control. They want something done about it. — John Boehner

The government's desire to expand global trade may be understandable, but we mustn't give away too much. We must tell our elected representatives to at least delay the Canada-China FIPA until it has been examined more thoroughly, and to reconsider the inclusion of investor-state arbitration mechanisms in all trade deals. — David Suzuki

Year after year in Washington, budget debates seem to come down to an old, tired argument: on one side, those who want more government, regardless of the cost; on the other, those who want less government, regardless of the need ... Government has a role, and an important role. Yet, too much government crowds out initiative and hard work, private charity and the private economy ... Government should be active, but limited; engaged, but not overbearing. — George W. Bush

Jealousy, and local policy mix too much in all our public councils for the good government of the Union. In a words, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance ... — George Washington

One is the feeling that no matter how hard we--I and my buddies--try to win this damn war, or even just fight it properly, we're held back. Or we're on the edge of a court-martial for treading too close to the edge of the rule book. That makes us feel kind of abandoned, like our own government doesn't support us, maybe even doesn't like us very much. By 'us' I mean all the Gis over here, — Mark Berent

Of course, many acts which are sins against God are also injuries to our fellow-citizens, and must on that account, but only on that account, be made crimes. But of all the sins in the world, I should have thought homosexuality was the one that least concerns the State. We hear too much of the State. Government is at its best a necessary evil. Let's keep it in its place. — C.S. Lewis

A compassionate government does not need to pay too much attention to those who don't have needs. True leadership is to fulfill a need of the needy. People who have needs need attention indeed! Be a true leader! — Israelmore Ayivor

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions. — Joseph Epstein

You tell me that class distinctions are baubles used by monarchs, I defy you to show me a republic, ancient or modern, in which distinctions have not existed. You call these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such baubles that men are led. I would not say this in public, but in a assembly of wise statesmen it should be said. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling: honour. We must nourish that feeling. The people clamour for distinction. See how the crowd is awed by the medals and orders worn by foreign diplomats. We must recreate these distinctions. There has been too much tearing down; we must rebuild. A government exists, yes and power, but the nation itself - what is it? Scattered grains of sand. — Napoleon Bonaparte

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. — Ray Bradbury

In using the strong hand, as now compelled to do, the government has a difficult duty to perform. At the very best, it will by turns do both too little and too much. It can properly have no motive of revenge, no purpose to punish merely for punishment's sake. While we must, by all available means, prevent the overthrow of the government, we should avoid planting and cultivating too many thorns in the bosom of society. — Abraham Lincoln

For a generation and more, the government has sought to meet our needs by multiplying its bureaucracy. Washington has taken too much in taxes from Main Street, and Main Street has received too little in return. It is not necessary to centralize power in order to solve our problems. — George McGovern

We may as well face the fact, and face it squarely, that we are too much governed. The agencies of government have multiplied, their ramifications extended, their powers enlarged, and their sphere widened, until the whole system is top-heavy. We are drifting into dangerous and insidious paternalism, submerging the self-reliance of the citizen, and weakening the responsibility and stifling the initiative of the individual. We suffer not from too little legislation but from too much. We need fewer enactments and more repeals. — Roland H. Hartley

Government doesn't have to be the enemy, but too much government has produced a new kind of inequality in America: opportunity inequality. — Marco Rubio

The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it. — Anthony Burgess

In a general sense, I think it's bad to bring too much money into climbing, since it takes away a little from the beauty of the mountains. But at the same time, I can't blame the Nepali government - or the Indian, Pakistani or Chinese, depending on where you're climbing - from wanting to capitalize on foreign climbers. — Alex Honnold

The only thing worse than too much government is too little: in failed states, people suffer at least as much violence and injustice as under authoritarian rule, and in addition their trains do not run on time. — Tony Judt

The uncomfortable truth is that we all enjoyed the party far too much to query where all the booze was coming from. Now we seem intent on lynching the barman for letting us get drunk and attacking the Government for letting us get a hangover. — Sean O'Grady

Yes, we all know that there's a good chance the missiles won't work properly when the government people finally come to get them, but over the years we've stopped worrying about that. Deep down, most of us feel it's probably better this way. After all, if there are families in faraway countries with their own backyard missiles, armed and pointed back at us, we would hope that they too have found a much better use for them. — Shaun Tan

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government has grown out of too much government. — John Sharp Williams

We are kidding ourselves if we don't think of the drug business as a legitimate business. It's what funds governments. It's too much money to ignore. — Daniel Craig

Not too far away from now - in the next 6-7 years - 75 million Americans will be retail buyers of healthcare. And they'll come to the marketplace with their own money and either a subsidy from their employer or a subsidy from their government. And it doesn't much matter - they'll be spending their money. — Mark T Bertolini

Grover seemed to read my mind. "Listen," he said. "I don't know if your grandparents came on boats or if they were a bunch of farmers. But you've got to understand something about the old man. His folks weren't more than a few years from Wounded Knee. The government still shot people. It stole the kids, performed experiments on them, sterilized the little girls. If you made too much noise you just disappeared. That's just the way it was. You didn't make trouble." "Sounds like the Nazis," I said. Grover just shrugged. "I'm just trying to make you understand. This is a big thing he's doing. I'm telling you again, he's counting on you because you're the only white man he trusts. — Kent Nerburn

Today, the United States faces a serious drug crisis. Some would say that only conspiracy theorists would claim the U.S. government helped fuel this situation. However, too much evidence proves the truth of the assertion - the U.S. government did have a hand in fueling today's drug crisis in America. — Kerry Patton

The problem is that corporations have way too much power in Congress and the government and they're rigging the system so that they don't pay taxes, but we do. We pay for all these crazy wars they come up with. — Richard Patrick

Thomas Jefferson had rather serious concerns about the fate of the democratic experiment.28 He feared the rise of a new form of absolutism that was more ominous than the British rule overthrown in the American Revolution. He distinguished in his later years between what he called "aristocrats and democrats."29 And then he went on to say, "I hope we shall ... crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations, which dare already to challenge our government to a trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country."30 He also wrote, "I sincerely believe ... that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies."31 That's the kind of quote from a Founding Father you don't see too much. — Noam Chomsky

A democratic state begins from the assumption that most of those who gravitate toward power are mediocre and probably immoral. It assumes that we must always protect ourselves from bad government. We must be prepared for the worst leaders even as we hope for the best. And as Karl Popper wrote, this understanding leads to a new approach to power, for it forces us to replace the question: Who shall rule? By the new question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage? — Chris Hedges

There is something wrong with a government that makes women the legal property of their husbands. The whole system needs changing, but men will never make the changes. They have too much to lose. — Victoria Woodhull

The America of Obama's dreams is not the one of self-reliance and entrepreneurship to which he paid phony lip service at the beginning of his speech. It is an America in which the government, rather than the private sector, creates wealth and leads ignorant, helpless people by the nose from cradle to grave, from preschool to the academy, with the caveat that if they succeed too much, they will make themselves enemies of the state and targets for punitive action. Obama's new American dreams is an American nightmare. — David Limbaugh

The USA government sure do like their propaganda feeds! Unfortunately, too much propaganda does create the scenario where no one believes anything that they say. It's just like Pinocchio. — Steven Magee

There is an extraordinary irony in government efforts to promote more rational and sustainable forms of behaviour in individuals in economies which are dominated by the imperative to make profit through capital accumulation, and which are inevitably addicted to unsustainable growth. Too much of the practice literature ignores political economic matters mediating practices. As Tim Jackson and others have shown, the idea of a green capitalism, in which growth of output is 'de-coupled' from greenhouse gas emissions, is an impossible dream. I shall therefore argue that practice approaches need to consider political economic matters. — Elizabeth Shove

If you are asked any question by a police officer or a government agent and you realize that it is not in your best interest to answer, you should not mention the Fifth Amendment privilege or tell the police that you wish to exercise your right to avoid incriminating yourself. In this day and age, there is too great a danger that the police and the prosecutor might later persuade the judge to use that statement against you as evidence of your guilt. And if they do, to make matters much worse, you have no guarantee that the FBI agent in your case will not slightly misremember your exact words. — James Duane

They dated," Frank says, with just a little too much relish. "For two years. They were the shiniest golden couple of our class. What a match, you know? Both gorgeous. She's super smart--does student government, debate, choir, all that business. He does the sports and volunteers with his dad's church, has those puppy eyes that make you want to buy him a boat--"
"Do they?"
"Yes, gaze deeply into his eyes next time--you'll feel it." He takes a long draw from his drink and then continues. "Anyway, they were the kind of couple where it's like, separate--they're great. But together, it's . . . star magic."
"Star magic?"
"From the universe. Celestial bodies aligning and shit. That kind of magic. — Emma Mills