Quotes about Policy

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government

Choice by the people themselves is not generally distinguished for its wisdom.

taxes are not raised to carry on wars, but that wars are raised to carry on taxes

There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war, abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost without it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the situation of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no security can be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a peace, the case becomes reversed.

The right of war and peace is in the nation. where else should it reside but in those who are to pay the expense?

The Obamacare roll-out was an epic failure.

The crime of taxation is not in the taking of it, it's in the way that it's spent.

All of you, I am sure, have heard many cries about Government interference with business and about "creeping socialism." I should like to remind the gentlemen who make these complaints that if events had been allowed to continue as they were going prior to March 4, 1933, most of them would have no businesses left for the Government or for anyone else to interfere with — and almost surely we would have socialism in this country, real socialism.

Communism is like prohibition, it is a good idea, but it won't work.

Government was founded on the working premiss of being primarily an asylum for ineptitude and indigence.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Liberals don't ask 'Does it work?' They ask 'Does it equalize?'