The trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources, and hence facilitate some [wealth] redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level, to make sure that everybody's got a shot.
You don't take it personally. You understand that if people are angry that somehow the government is failing, then they are going to look to the guy who represents government.
Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.
Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled as they have been during the Bush administration. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance.
In all well-attempered governments there is nothing which should be more jealously maintained than the spirit of obedience to law, more especially in small matters; for transgression creeps in unperceived and at last ruins the state, just as the constant recurrence of small expenses in time eats up a fortune.
When Berkshire Hathaway laid out three billion dollars for GE today, we didn't spend it, we invested it. When the Federal government buys the mortgages, they're not spending it, they're investing it. Now, they're investing it in distress type assets but they're buying them at distress prices if they buy them at market. It's the kind of stuff I love to do. I just don't have 700 million. Maybe we could go in it together.
The nation's non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate with it on its own terms, as is every nation's right and every good government's duty.
The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing.
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.
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.
If you hear what people had to say about Abraham Lincoln or what they had to say about FDR, or what they had to say about Ronald Reagan when he first came in and was trying to change our approach to government, that elicited huge responses.
We can't discount how scary and shaken not just the Turkish government is, but Turkish society is. Imagine if you had some rump group of military officials here in the United States who started flying off with F-16s or other artillery and were taking shots at government buildings, and people were killed and injured. People would be scared and rightfully so.
I'll be honest, there have been times when I've listened to the rhetoric in Europe where an easy equivalent somehow between the United States and Russia and between how our governments operate versus other governments operate, where those distinctions aren't made.
Today the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of all of us.