Government does not create wealth. The major role for the government is to create an environment where people take risks to expand the job rate in the United States.
When human beings are scared and feel everything is exposed to the government, we will censor ourselves from free thinking. That's dangerous for human development.
What you do is as important as anything government does. I ask you to seek a common good beyond your comfort; to defend needed reforms against easy attacks; to serve your nation, beginning with your neighbor. I ask you to be citizens: citizens, not spectators; citizens, not subjects; responsible citizens, building communities of service and a nation of character.
I know it's going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we're in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.
If we have the kinds of confirmation that we need, we will once again work with the international community and the organization charged with monitoring compliance by the Syrian government, and we will reach out to patrons of Assad like Russia to put a stop to it.
Good Government is not intrusive the people are hardly aware of it; the next best is felt yet loved; then comes that which is known and feared; the worst government is hated.
The museums used to be exhibition halls for government propaganda, and now every city wants to build a museum. A few thousand are to be built in the next few years, all using taxpayer money. But there is no system, no research, no content, no good programs, no good managers.
I am an adherent of the ideal of democracy, although I well know the weaknesses of the democratic form of government. Social equality and economic protection of the individual appeared to me always as the important communal aims of the state. Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
It's important to make sure that governments have some checks on what they do, that people can oversee what's being done so the government doesn't abuse it.
The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure... It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies.
There are few things wholly evil or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of government policy, is an inseparable compound of the two, so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.