Quotes About Government Regulation

#1. Why has it seemed that the only way to protect the environment is with heavy-handed government regulation?

Gale Norton

#2. Certainly, the job of a U.S. senator is to create a climate conducive to creating jobs, which is lower taxes and less government regulation. What Harry Reid has been doing is putting forward those policies that actually put more regulation on business.

Sharron Angle

#3. I'm a latecomer to the environmental issue, which for years seemed to me like an excuse for more government regulation. But I can see that in rich societies, voters are paying less attention to economic issues and more to issues of the spirit, including the environment.

David Frum

#4. Between economic freedom and government regulation? Chapter 2 will address these issues. The specific question I ask is how far very complex regulation has become the disease of which it purports to be the cure, distorting and corrupting both the political and the economic process.

Niall Ferguson

#5. I don't believe in government regulation of the software industry.

Jim Barksdale

#6. Electricity should not be banned, it just needs much better government regulation and understanding by the medical profession of the full range of toxicity that it presents to the human.

Steven Magee

#7. Some kinds of government regulation of private consensual homosexual behavior may face substantial constitutional challenge.

Anthony Kennedy

#8. The history of government regulation of food safety is one of government watchdogs chasing the horse after it's out of the barn.

David Aaron Kessler

#9. 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.

Ronald Reagan

#10. The trouble with government regulation of the market is that it prohibits capitalistic acts between consenting adults.

Robert Nozick

#11. Any time people create a "black market" to avoid government regulation, they are engaged in, and promoting, free market economics.

Dave Champion

#12. Vigilant and effective antitrust enforcement today is preferable to the heavy hand of government regulation of the Internet tomorrow.

Orrin Hatch

#13. The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any government regulation of religious beliefs as such. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold views abhorrent to the authorities.

William J. Brennan

#14. Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway.

John Stossel

#15. If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.

P. J. O'Rourke

#16. [Government] regulation is an imperfect substitute for the accountability, and trust, built into a market in which food producers meet the gaze of eaters and vice versa.

Michael Pollan

#17. Liberals say they are for civil liberties and personal freedom, but they continue to advocate government regulation of business, redistribution of wealth, and various forms of social engineering to manipulate human relationships and attitudes.

Richard Ebeling

#18. The people who tried government regulation have lives which are miserable.

John Stossel

#19. Some doomsayers think the collapse will be triggered by runaway government spending, excessive taxation, oppressive regulation, food shortages, fuel shortages or natural disasters such as deadly pandemics or lethal changes in the world's climate.

Robert Higgs

#20. Socialism is socialism. Government run enterprises are just as inept under democratic governments as they are under autocratic governments.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

#21. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of government.

James Madison

#22. Marx called Darwin a plagiarist and Malthus a fraud. Now all Marxists are Malthusian Darwinists.

A.E. Samaan

#23. State capitalism is about more than emergency government spending, implementation of more intelligent regulation, or a stronger social safety net. It's about state dominance of economic activity for political gain.

Ian Bremmer

#24. We want to see oil and gas regulations on a continental basis given the integrated nature of this industry, with the current conditions in the oil and gas sector, this government will not consider unilateral regulation.

Stephen Harper

#25. Modi government has not flouted any rule or regulation to help anyone.

Gautam Adani

#26. You either limit the government, or you limit the scope of your life. Why is the government that precious to you in the first place?

A.E. Samaan

#27. The right to "liberty" and "pursuit" of happiness is incompatible with a government that makes choices for you.

A.E. Samaan

#28. Allow? Shouldn't women decide what they'll allow for their own bodies, not a government acting out an antiquated, unnecessary law?

Tracy Banghart

#29. Let's not allow the voice of the people to be overwhelmed by the siren song of those who opposed regulation, who demanded that government should stand aside and let finance and business run the show.

David Blunkett

#30. The ruler is the first servant of the state. He is paid well so that he can maintain the dignity of his office. But he is required in return to work effectively for the well-being of the state.

Frederick II Of Hohenstaufen

#31. If government goes beyond securing liberty and instead violates it through regulation, redistribution, and planning, then citizens are victims of legal plunder.

Richard Ebeling

#32. I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.

Mark McKinnon

#33. Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) is a major problem from poorly tested products and it should be dealt with sooner rather than later by government regulators.

Steven Magee

#34. The idea economy is a conversation. Try to channel or control that conversation and you will stop the chatter.

A.E. Samaan

#35. Ultimately a regulation is a signal of design failure ... it is what we call a license to harm: a permit issued by a government to an industry so that it may dispense sickness, destruction, and death at an "acceptable" rate.

William McDonough

#36. The 'Occupy' movement has no real solutions, except more government, more spending, more regulation, more bureaucracy, more unsustainable lethargic pseudo-university with no return on investment, more more more of what got us into this hole.

Mark Steyn

#37. What constitutes wise policy . . . will depend on whether the immediate objective of policy is the promotion of political ends, the protection of vested interests, or the satisfaction of consumer needs.

George W. Stocking

#38. Government mandates, incidentally, are likely to distort rather than solve the problem of finding a market. I would, therefore, force my organization to live by its wits rather than to rely on capricious subsidies or non-economic-based regulation to fuel my business.

Clayton Christensen

#39. We are in the energy dictatorship that calls itself the United States of America.

Steven Magee

#40. The biggest enemy of western people is not war or terrorism, it is their own governments lack of regulation of public health and safety.

Steven Magee

#41. Should government refrain from regulation (taxation), the worthlessness of the money becomes apparent and the fraud can no longer be concealed.

John Maynard Keynes

#42. Democratic Socialism devolves into totalitarian Socialism and eventually into full on Communism as people resist statism.

A.E. Samaan

#43. According to an original reading of the Constitution and Declaration, the intrusiveness that is an inevitable part of big government is an offense against its people.

A.E. Samaan

#44. The banking collapse was caused, more than anything, by bad government policy and the total failure of bad regulation, rather than by greed.

Nigel Farage

#45. Very few tyrants argued for the slavery of the masses. Instead, they argued for their right to protect the people from themselves.

A.E. Samaan

#46. In environments where corporations become too interventionist and capture regulation themselves, the government must be able to battle back so that the people have a chance.

Ian Bremmer

#47. Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.

Milton Friedman

#48. , I believe in some type of free market system. I just don't think you'll find an example of one completely free from government intervention.

Kenneth Eade

#49. Deregulation is a transfer of power from the trodden to the treading. It is unsurprising that all conservative parties claim to hate big government.

George Monbiot

#50. Here in the UK the government has decided to accept the recommendations of the Better Regulation Task Force to measure and make targeted reductions in the administrative costs - the red tape costs - that regulations impose on business.

John Hutton

#51. The term "totalitarian" was derived from Adolf Hitler's "Total State", which was a "craddle to grave" solution that sought to micro-manage all aspects of humanity.

A.E. Samaan

#52. The biggest criminals that I have met in life are working for the government. They make mass murderers look like amateurs.

Steven Magee

#53. Even Adam Smith's "invisible hand" occasionally needs a slap on the wrist.

Bill Mech

#54. Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by.

A.E. Samaan

#55. Life is full of joys and sorrows, much of it our own making. Sadly, the West has voted time and time again for bigger government, more inflation, higher taxes and excessive regulation - all policies that have kept us from Adam Smith's vision of an opulent society.

Mark Skousen

#56. Tariffs protect ill-considered government policies, such as costly regulations and high taxes on labor and capital that make our goods uncompetitive in international markets.

Paul Craig Roberts

#57. The term "racist" comes from the word "racialist": Someone that sees the world from a racial prism.

A.E. Samaan

#58. People should be free, people should be unencumbered by regulation as much as possible, that big government always goes corrupt and the truth shall always set you free.

Glenn Beck

#59. Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!

Sarah Palin

#60. There is a dangerous willful ignorance in governments to the adverse health effects of the various forms of electromagnetic radiation.

Steven Magee

#61. Tyrants are obvious, and easy to identify. It is the well entrenched and corrupt establishment that is truly insidious.

A.E. Samaan

#62. 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

#63. Instead of focusing on growing jobs and reigniting our economy, President Obama focused on growing government and tried to remake the United States into the image of the debt-laden countries of Europe. His approach has been more spending, more regulation, and higher taxes.

Rob Portman

#64. Conservatives want smaller government. They want to focus on market-based solutions wherever one can. They want to have as little regulation as possible. But in general, they recognize that government must play an important role for a society to operate.

Norman Ornstein

#65. Funny, I don't particularly care for either "laws" or "order". Liberty is messy. Freedom yields imperfect results.

A.E. Samaan

#66. Wall Street billionaires are predicting that Roosevelt-style railroad rate regulation will sooner or later bring about financial catastrophe. [ca. 1906]

Edmund Morris

#67. Those policies - more taxes, more regulation, more debt, more spending, more government - will make American worse. It just will, in my view.

Jeff Sessions

#68. I'm sorry that government involves filling out a lot of forms ... I'm sorry myself that we're not still on the frontier, where we could all tote guns, shoot anything that moved and spit to our hearts' content. But we live in a diverse and crowded country, and with civilization comes regulation.

Molly Ivins

#69. Conservatives ... are so opposed to government regulations that they are skeptical of anyone who identifies a problem that requires regulatory solutions - and they are inherently accepting of those who downplay such problems.

Joseph J. Romm