Government Welfare Quotes

#1. The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy.

Richard Ebeling

#2. Instead of solving economic problems, government welfare socialism created monstrous moral and spiritual problems - the kind of problems that are inevitable when individuals turn responsibility for their lives over to others.

Star Parker

#3. Government welfare programs contribute to the disintegration of poor families. They make women and children dependent on government; dependent for food, for clothing, for shelter; and reward fatherless families with extra benefits and welfare perks.

Hans F. Sennholz

#4. Whenever government assumed responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies.

Leonard Read

#5. We've got this weird dysgenic situation where we're basically just paying idiots to breed and taxing intelligent people to stay away from each other with anything remotely resembling fertility.

Stefan Molyneux

#6. If men, who in their hearts are friends to a government, forbear giving it their utmost assistance against its enemies, they put it in the power of a few desperate men to ruin the welfare of those who are much superior to them in strength, number, and interest.

Joseph Addison

#7. The object of government is the welfare of the people.

Theodore Roosevelt

#8. [T]he power system continues only as long as individuals try to get something for nothing. The day when a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from the government, declares that it will look after its own welfare and interests, then on that day the power elites are doomed.

Antony C. Sutton

#9. The citizens of America have too much discernment to be argued into anarchy. And I am much mistaken, if experience has not wrought a deep and solemn conviction in the public mind, that greater energy of government is essential to the welfare and prosperity of the community

Alexander Hamilton

#10. The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Thomas Sowell

#11. What Clinton severed with his welfare reform was the obligation of the federal government to step in when the states failed and to monitor these programs.

Robert Scheer

#12. Charities should not become the junior partner in the welfare state; whether or not they provide services funded by Government or, indeed, receive grants from Government, they must remain independent and focused on their mission.

William Shawcross

#13. You can either have individual liberty, or dependence on the government. One is designed to undo the other.

A.E. Samaan

#14. The corporation that shrinks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.

Theodore Roosevelt

#15. When any welfare scheme is being proposed, its political sponsors always dwell on what a generous and compassionate government should pay to Paul; they neglect to mention that this additional money must be seized from Peter.

Henry Hazlitt

#16. While anyone who practices a religion has the right to their own religious truths, it doesn't give them the right to violate the welfare of another human or an animal. So, where necessary, it is the task of the government to intervene and curb the freedom of religion.

Marianne Thieme

#17. The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

Thomas Sowell

#18. I agree with the idea of cutting [budget], but it should all be coming out of entitlements for the affluent and not out of domestic discretionary, which is welfare, education, all the stuff the government does, parks, FBI, and it shouldn't be coming out of Medicaid.

David Brooks

#19. If we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.

George F. Will

#20. I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between being concerned with [the unemployed, the sick without medical care, human welfare, etc.] and believing that the federal government is the proper agent for their solution.

Barry M. Goldwater

#21. I thought the function of the government was to promote the general welfare, not to provide it.

Ronald Reagan

#22. I've always believed as a value that the government has a vital - not overwhelming, but vital - role to play in furthering human welfare and good. I think we have an important supportive role to play, hopefully intelligent and sensible.

Dick Gephardt

#23. The country - or the government - is headed for bankruptcy. So we're going to be continuing to speak out against corporate welfare as something that hurts everybody except those direct beneficiaries.

Charles Koch

#24. Let us give up our longing for welfare, our love of war, and our desire to see the government control and shape our fellow citizens. We must come to imagine liberty again, and believe that it can be a reality. We must recapture what it means to be free.

Ron Paul

#25. Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it.

Meg Whitman

#26. If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare ... they may appoint teachers in every state ... The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.

James Madison

#27. The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#28. Government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market, we need businesses to give them a chance and not just fall back on labour from abroad.

Iain Duncan Smith

#29. For me, liberals are people who seek to use government to promote the general welfare.

Douglas Massey

#30. When the government intervenes to help, whether in the European welfare state or in America's more diluted version, it not only diminishes our responsibility for the desired outcome, it enfeebles the institutions through which people live satisfying lives.

Charles Murray

#31. The sick in soul insist that it is humanity that is sick, and they are the surgeons to operate on it. They want to turn the world into a sickroom. And once they get humanity strapped to the operating table, they operate on it with an ax.

Eric Hoffer

#32. The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny.

Calvin Coolidge

#33. For the welfare of the whole world and the new world order.

Hosni Mubarak

#34. not saying there weren't Christians in our founding government, I'm just saying our Constitution is a secular, humanistic document which calls upon 'We the people,' not God, as the guarantor of our 'Order, Union, Justice, Tranquility, and Welfare.

William Struse

#35. I have come from outside Delhi, but I give you an assurance that the people in the Government are very capable. I want to awaken and unite that power for the welfare of nation.

Narendra Modi

#36. Maine's welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job.

Paul LePage

#37. To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

Henry George

#38. Free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.

Noam Chomsky

#39. I stated that I'm a libertarian Republican, which means I believe in a series of issues, such as smaller government, constraint on budget deficits, free markets, globalization, and a whole series of other things, including welfare reform.

Alan Greenspan

#40. And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

Edmund Burke

#41. the basic responsibility of government is to maximize the welfare of its citizens, not to pursue some abstract concept of the global good'.76

Edward Luce

#42. We're seeing so many people come around and say, "Listen, we want a real conservative. We don't want a Washington dealmaker who will support Democrats and cut deals to grow government and give into the cronyism and corporate welfare."

Ted Cruz

#43. 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.

Ronald Reagan

#44. It is not the role of government to use the taxation and welfare system as a tool to level the playing field.

Joe Hockey

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

Ronald Reagan

#46. The sheer number of government employees and welfare recipients effectively transforms the purpose of government from maintaining order to confiscating as much as possible from vulnerable taxpayers.

James Bovard

#47. The message of David Duke, is this, basically: Big government, anti-big government, get out of my pocketbook, cut my taxes, put welfare people back to work. That's a very popular message. The problem is the messenger.

Dan Quayle

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

Ronald Reagan

#49. Using coercion to drive charity is like using kidnapping to create love.

Stefan Molyneux

#50. 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

#51. [Giving welfare to poor people] is the equivalent of the government sending [fat people] a jumbo bag of Bugles in the mail twice a month.

Adam Carolla

#52. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.

Daniel J. Boorstin

#53. Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

Dorothy Thompson

#54. We talked about many issues, like welfare, is it the way of life or hand up? Talked about size of government, how much should it tax families and small businesses? And when we left that lunch, we got in the car and I looked over at Chuck and said, 'I'll be damned. we're Republicans.'

Susana Martinez

#55. The government doesn't really prosecute for polygamy anymore, but a lot of the arrests are of groups supporting themselves through welfare scams or for child abuse. So that was all I'd really heard about polygamists.

Jeanne Tripplehorn

#56. American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does.

Robert Kuttner

#57. The United States are a political state, or organized society, whose end is government, for the security, welfare, and happiness of all who live under its protection.

William H. Seward

#58. And here we encounter the seeds of government disaster and collapse - the kind that wrecked ancient Rome and every other civilization that allowed a sociopolitical monster called the welfare state to exist.

Barry Goldwater

#59. It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#60. After two years of fighting, government shutdowns and little to no agreement on anything except welfare reform in 1996, President Clinton was re-elected and decided it was time for compromise.

Ari Fleischer

#61. The Convention probably foresaw what it has been a principal aim of these papers to inculcate that the danger which most threatens our political welfare is, that the state governments will finally sap the foundations of the Union.

Alexander Hamilton

#62. All branches of our government today are controlled by individuals who use their power to undermine liberty and enhance the welfare/warfare state-and frequently their own wealth and power,

Ron Paul

#63. Badger had been waiting with ever increasing certainty for that brown, government stamped envelope, to hit the floor with the impact of several atomic bombs; the shockwaves hitting him before the sound could penetrate his ears.

Paul Howsley

#64. Tariffs, government contracts, naval and military spending, nationalized industries, tax policy, social welfare, the legal privileging of labor unions were among the means at the disposal of the governing class to exploit the public at large for the benefits of its various clienteles.

Ralph Raico

#65. We need to take away the government's money power. The banking industry needs its welfare check ended. The dollar's soundness depends on its being untied from the machine that can make an infinite number of copies of dollars and reduce their value to zero.

Ron Paul

#66. If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...

James Madison

#67. Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

Grover Norquist

#68. The government is largely influenced by people who advocate corporate welfare and advocate these policies that create this two-tiered society.

Charles Koch

#69. It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object.

James Madison

#70. Under both the welfare state and communism, the responsibility for the welfare, security, and prosperity of the people is presumed to rest with the central government.

Leonard Read

#71. Times are tough but they are tough because the government is trying to do the right thing, whether on public service reform, education, health, anti-social behaviour and welfare, or in counter-terrorism

Tony Blair

#72. To continue on the road we Americans have traveled for the past century is ultimately to deliver ourselves completely into the hands of an unlimited government. We can have a free society or a welfare state. We cannot have both.

Robert Higgs

#73. The UN now and world government eventually must serve one single goal - the guarantee of the security, tranquillity, and the welfare of all mankind.

Albert Einstein

#74. We believe that only government has the capacity
not to mention the political and moral responsibility
to promote the general welfare.
Father Kramer as quoted in Sweet Charity?

Janet Poppendieck

#75. And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

Patricia Hewitt

#76. It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.

Ayn Rand

#77. And he said that 47%-that's pretty high-47% of Americans are basically welfare bums who are mooching off the government. And then he said, 'My job is not to worry about those people.' You know, where do people get this stuff that Mitt Romney is a heartless, calculating c**ksucker?

Bill Maher

#78. I wish the government would read the Constitution. I think that would probably help quite a bit. And maybe they did read it and maybe they got confused when they read the preamble which says one of the duties is to promote the general welfare.

Benjamin Carson

#79. Government is like fire. If it is kept within bounds and under the control of the people, it contributes to the welfare of all. But if it gets out of place, if it gets too big and out of control, it destroys the happiness and even the lives of the people.

Harold Stassen

#80. Since Day 1, we have maintained that ours is a Government dedicated to the poor and will continue to work dedicatedly for the welfare of the poor.

Narendra Modi

#81. Western governments should bear their responsibilities toward the welfare of their people and not try to make oil producers pay the costs

Mohammad Khatami

#82. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for YOUR sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples. Do you know what would happen if we pigs failed in our duty? Jones would come back! Yes, Jones would come back! Surely, comrades, cried Squealer almost pleadingly

George Orwell

#83. Contrary to the prevailing notion that good governance is bad politics, in reality good governance is good politics. A government should work keeping in mind the welfare of future generations, not the next election.

Narendra Modi

#84. That the government's power under the Taft-Hartley Act to stop a strike by injunction so clearly strengthens the hand of the employer-even though it is used only when a strike threatens
the national health, welfare, or safety-is a grave blemish and explains much of union resistance to the Act.

Peter Drucker