Quotes About Small Government

#1. But, no matter how big or small dictators are, they all accept 100 percent the principle that granting government authority to manipulate our lives and control our property is legitimate and morally acceptable.

Ron Paul

#2. The function of Government must be to favor no small group at the expense of its duty to protect the rights of personal freedom and of private property of all its citizens.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#3. If we don't get this economy going, the numbers that represent this stimulus package are going to be small compared to the loss of revenue to the federal government for our economy.

Judd Gregg

#4. Even to an outsider like myself, not only in the theatre was such disunity evident, but in much else in government Spain. Alvarez del Vayo, Socialist Minister of Foreign Affairs, once asked, Why is it Spain's people are so great, but her leaders so small?

Langston Hughes

#5. Small government is beautiful

Carla Howell

#6. The government's Small Business Administration reports that small businesses represent 99% of all employers in the U.S. and are responsible for generating well over half of new jobs created.

Ellen Tauscher

#7. The vitriol and viciousness is the inevitable result of a government increasingly deciding the vital aspects of people's lives.

A.E. Samaan

#8. 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

#9. The best thing government can do now is get out of the way and let small businesses innovate, hire and grow. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen unless Washington stops increasing regulations, taxes and other blocks to business growth.

Oliver DeMille

#10. It is a matter of common knowledge that the government of South Carolina is under domination of a small ring of cunning, conniving men.

Strom Thurmond

#11. What the world needs is a small, compact, flexible fusion technology that could make electricity where and when it is needed. The existing fusion program is leading to a huge source of centralized power, at a price that nobody except a government can afford.

Freeman Dyson

#12. There is no such thing as a 'free' government benefit. Ask small-business owners who are footing skyrocketing bills for bottomless jobless benefits.

Michelle Malkin

#13. Big Government is the small option: it's the guarantee of smaller freedom, smaller homes, smaller cars, smaller opportunities, smaller lives.

Mark Steyn

#14. Totally could oust a government in a small South American country. That made me laugh.

Kristen Ashley

#15. [I]t kind of terrified me to imagine myself spending the rest of my life tinkering on the margins of the small arguments.

Lawrence Lessig

#16. You know, I like to think that I will subscribe very much to the core Republican principles of small government. Making a small number of rules and getting out of the way. Keeping taxes low. Creating an environment for small businesses to grow and thrive.

Meg Whitman

#17. Small business owners are fighting every day to create and innovate, but continue to face government barriers to job creation.

Peter Roskam

#18. The U.S. should take notes: Government overspending and a campaign of alienating investors and small business isn't really the best way to boost the economy or overcome massive unemployment.

Oliver DeMille

#19. If the small government concept grows, we have fewer dollars leaving our pockets, we have more folks motivated to make a profit.

Tim Scott

#20. When we get government off the backs of our job creators, small businesses have a better chance of thriving. And when small businesses thrive, so does our economy.

Ann Wagner

#21. Hispanic unemployment is higher than the national average and when the federal government is killing small businesses and killing jobs it is hurting the future of the Hispanic community and we need to carry that message.

Ted Cruz

#22. Big government makes small citizens.

Mark Steyn

#23. A State divided into a small number of rich and a large number of poor will always develop a government manipulated by the rich to protect the amenities represented by their property.

Harold Laski

#24. Republicans have been very successful. There are three things Americans don't like: big unions, big government and big corporations. So Republicans go after big government and big unions, and only talk about small businesses.

Andy Stern

#25. The only way to effectively secure the common good is for the government to remain small.

Joel Miller

#26. As the economy faces such difficulties, more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.

Lucy Powell

#27. 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

#28. From a business perspective, we are trying to propose some suggestions to the government. Not only to benefit Fosun, but to benefit all private enterprises, especially proposals to help small to medium-sized companies.

Guo Guangchang

#29. As in 1914, the government mounted an extraordinary campaign to help. Winegrowers were granted delays in being called to active duty, military labor detachments were sent to the vineyards and farm horses of small growers were not to be requisitioned until the harvest was completed.

Don Kladstrup

#30. Memo to Congress: America's problem is not that government is too small. It's the spending, stupid!

Bob Beauprez

#31. In this respect the differences between the USA and the USSR are those of evangelical dinosaurs competing for domination on one small planet: the first deifies Jesus Christ, the other Karl Marx. Neither has much practical interest in what those two sincere and hard-working fellows actually preached.

Edward Abbey

#32. Maryland needs someone in Congress who will fight to create jobs, stop out-of-control government spending and defend small businesses.

Andrew P. Harris

#33. 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

#34. Every family in America knows they have to do a budget. Every small business in America knows they have to do a budget. Every local government, every state, knows they have to do a budget.

John Boehner

#35. The rebel army in Libya is just like 1,000 guys in Toyota trucks. The world is asking the question; can 1000 anti-government guys in pick-up trucks with small arms, take over a country of millions? To which I say, ask the Teabaggers.

Bill Maher

#36. Liberal redistributionists in favor of heavy taxation place less weight on incentive than do small-government conservatives.

Edmund Phelps

#37. The great fish swallow up the small; and he who is most strenuous for the rights of the people, when vested with power, is as eager after the prerogatives of government.

Abigail Adams

#38. The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy. It borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

Mitch Daniels

#39. Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]

Noam Chomsky

#40. At some point, the government expands into the private sphere so far that you live in a place with a whole lot less freedom. I didn't like that that was the direction of travel for our country, and decided to come to Washington to try and be a small part of bringing it back.

Mike Pompeo

#41. The problem is big government. If whoever controls government can impose his way upon you, you have to fight constantly to prevent the control from being harmful. With small, limited government, it doesn't much matter who controls it, because it can't do you much harm.

Harry Browne

#42. The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.

Milton Friedman

#43. Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish - too much handling will spoil it.

Lao-Tzu

#44. It's not government that creates jobs; it's small business. Our job is to make sure they have the access to capital, the access to contracting opportunities, and the help, advice and mentoring that they need to go out and be successful.

Karen Mills

#45. A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.

Horace Mann

#46. I'm a committed Republican. I believe very strongly in individual liberty. I tend not to think much in terms of group politics. I really am a kind of small government person and I'm most certainly a fiscal conservative and strong on national defense.

Condoleezza Rice

#47. You could adjust the punishment to fit the infraction. Even a small fine would be enough to bring an errant government to heel.

George Soros

#48. American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.

Tony Judt

#49. With all this consumer debt, business debt, government debt, smaller movements in interest rates have a magnified effect. a small movement can tip the boat.

Bill Gross

#50. The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.

William Gilmore Simms

#51. Governing a large state is like boiling a small fish.

Laozi

#52. The school system has become a part of this huge government machine, governed by people who aren't close to the situation. That's why I'm a Republican. I believe in small government.

Stacey Dash

#53. Ted Cruz is a small-government conservative.

Mara Liasson

#54. Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise.

Mahatma Gandhi

#55. Government and other scientists have identified hundreds of chemicals that are linked to diseases in small concentrations and that are unregulated in drinking water or policed at limits that still pose serious risks.

Charles Duhigg

#56. We need to get out of the way of the small business owner - and big business owners - and allow them to do what government can only dream of doing: creating jobs and thereby creating wealth.

Diane Hendricks

#57. To Sherman, a large, complicated national government was contrary to "the true spirit and genius of republican government," which should be small and simple:

Mark David Hall

#58. I'm a small government conservative.

Tucker Carlson

#59. Self-certification may look like a small vision but there cannot be a greater decision for a Government to trust the honesty of the 1.25 billion people of the country.

Narendra Modi

#60. The federal government needs to get off the backs of small businesses and let the private sector grow and create jobs instead of harnessing it with onerous regulations and a repressive tax code.

Matt Salmon

#61. It was a bad idea, because I think that any government reorganization has to come in relatively small bites, or else you get indigestion.

Warren Rudman

#62. Every year, thousands of Californians flee that populous paradise for tax-eased small government oasis of America's red states.

Allen West

#63. I'm a conservative Republican, small-business guy, married to same gal - love of my life - for 36 years. Strong family man, deacon at my church; I believe in America. I know government is not the answer; individual liberty and personal responsibility is the answer.

Randy Weber

#64. In the space business, space had gotten very much to be the aerospace industry. This is something that governments only do and it's where the Boeings and the Lockheed's and the Northrop's and so forth. And there's no way these small companies could do it.

Peter Diamandis

#65. The federal government has failed us, so we, the elected officials of small-town America, are getting tough with illegal immigration.

Lou Barletta

#66. Government is big, we are small. We are only free when we slip through the cracks.

Maureen F. McHugh

#67. I am the candidate of tax cuts, repealing Obamacare, repealing Dodd-Frank, letting the markets work, coming up with patient-and-doctor-centered healthcare solutions instead of more big government - and just generally getting government off the backs of small businesses.

Wendy E. Long

#68. Forget the state concerns
we think this is bad for churches. Most churches are small and not ready to handle 500 pages of government red tape.

Michael Tanner

#69. The only government that I recognize
and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army
is that power thatestablishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

Henry David Thoreau

#70. Dubai has got very little oil; it is Abu Dhabi that has got the oil. Dubai has very small resources, and it is running out, so the government's plan has been to relieve Dubai of any dependency on oil at all by 2010.

Maurice Flanagan

#71. Healing of the world's woes will not come through this or that social or political theory; not through violent changes in government, but in the still small voice that speaks to the conscience and the heart.

Arthur James Moore

#72. Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

Thomas Sowell

#73. I have run two small businesses in Kansas, and I have seen how government can crush entrepreneurism. That's why I ran for Congress. It just so happens that there are a lot of people in south central Kansas who agree with me on that.

Mike Pompeo

#74. The collusion of big business, big labor, and big government threaten the spirit of small business that makes America great.

Foster Friess

#75. If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.

Monica Crowley

#76. I believe the private sector and small businesses drive our economy, and that means the federal government should work to ensure the private sector is as robust as possible.

Ann Kirkpatrick

#77. Small businesses are the number one job creators in America. Therefore, it is important that the federal government creates an environment that helps them succeed, not one that sets them up to fail.

Randy Neugebauer

#78. What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.

Richard Mentor Johnson

#79. What, do you just wake up in the morning and say, 'I think I'll overtake a small country today,' or 'I wonder if there's a long-standing government policy that needs subverting?

Anna Scarlett

#80. Small business people have gotten us out of nearly all modern recessions - not by waiting for others to fix things or turning to government, but rather by applying leadership, inventiveness, creativity and originality.

Oliver DeMille

#81. Big-government proponents embrace both the power of the federal government and the idea that millions of Americans ought to be dependent on its largesse. It's time to return to our Founders' love for small government. More is not always better.

Gary Bauer

#82. You keep talking, but you're not making any sense. Of course you upset someone in the government. You pretended to be the governor of New Jersey and confessed to a bunch of crimes."
I can't help the small smile that's playing at the corners of my mouth. "So," I say, "how did it go over?

Holly Black

#83. The only agency of the federal government with a more demoralized workforce than Homeland Security is the Small Business Administration, a notorious turkey farm that should have been abolished years ago.

Timothy Noah

#84. You ever notice how the folks who talk loudest about small government always seem to live in the states with the biggest subsidies?

Lee Child

#85. Madoff's scam was small compared to Ponzi schemes the government itself runs: Social Security and Medicare.

John Stossel

#86. No matter how much the government controls the economic system, any problem will be blamed on whatever small zone of freedom that remains.

Sheldon Richman

#87. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets.

Christopher Buckley

#88. I believe that for the small numbers of Jewish people in the United States, they exercise a tremendous amount of influence on the affairs of government.

Louis Farrakhan

#89. Governments are not built to perceive large truths. Only people can perceive great truths. Governments specialize in small and intermediate truths. They have to be instructed by their people in great truths.

Norman Cousins

#90. A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder.

Edward Luttwak

#91. I want a government small enough to fit inside the Constitution.

Harry Browne

#92. What we should be asking is not whether we need a big government or small government, but how we can create a smarter and better government.

Barack Obama

#93. The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.

Curtis Bean Dall

#94. The objection to an aristocracy is that it is a priesthood without a god.

G.K. Chesterton

#95. It's no small irony that the government inevitably and invariably ends up promoting precisely that which they would most like to repress.

Jock Sturges

#96. Conservatives should question how the death penalty actually works in order to stay true to small government, reduction in wasteful spending, and respect for human life.

Jay Sekulow

#97. We need to keep government small, but we also need to keep the influence of big business small, and we need to keep the power in the hands of the people, where it belongs. Big government and big business aren't the only two alternatives.

Michael Monroe

#98. The question is what will Mitt Romney do as president if his policy is simply to be hands off and let the government be made so small it can be drowned in a bathtub. In the 21st century global economy, no state alone has the ability to compete against China.

Jennifer Granholm

#99. Here are economies like China's economy where it's less than a tenth [of a percent] today, although it is growing, is quite small, because of the notion that the government takes care of everything, and Europe and China, philanthropy has not been nearly of the same scale.

Bill Gates

#100. After adding trillions to the debt on big-government policies most Americans didn't ask for and which we couldn't afford, Democratic leaders say they need more money, which they intend to take from small business, even though small businesses create the majority of new jobs.

Mitch McConnell