Quotes about Government

Read my lips: no new taxes.

Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich.

Most of us are aware of the sacrificial slaughter of Bear Sterns. Some people call it a bailout, but I call it a handout - a government handout to some of the richest people on Earth, paid for by American taxpayers.

I believe in the separation of church and state, but I do not believe in the separation of politics from religion.

I happen to agree with many of the liberal emphasis on compassion, justice and equality. I just disagree that it's the government's role to provide everything.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but can not do at all, or can not so well do, for themselves — in their separate, and individual capacities.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Let [the Constitution] be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges, let it be written in primers, in spelling books and in almanacs, let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation.

That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular govenment is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the govenment whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically re-signed their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.