P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.

A lot of people are happy to give money to charities but are wary of giving through taxes because they feel it doesn't produce any value.

Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller, we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves.

At the end of the day, philanthropy can only ever be an adjunct to what governments provide. And government coffers need to be replenished.

When government grows, it breaks the family.

Funded by the government just means funded by the people. Government, by the way, has no money. It only takes money from the people. Sometimes people forget that that's really what occurs.

You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.

President Obama wants to increase the size of government and raise taxes, while I support less government and more individual freedom.

In Michigan, a liberal democrat raised taxes and kept their government programs at the same level. And guess what? Their economy continued into the toilet, it continued down.

Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state. They forget that the state wants to live at the expense of everyone.

While I can see how the government has, at times, wasted taxpayers' money, and I can admit that too often its programs are ineffective, I also can see the good that government does.

I'm going to give away a lot more than half my money. I'd be happy to give that to the government if the government put together programs that were like I'm giving away to charity, in which I believe the money is effectively used to help people.

The government has become a mechanism for distributing largess, and your census form is your ticket.

There was no measure that required greater caution or more severe scrutiny than one to impose taxes or raise a loan, be the form what it may. I hold that government has no right to do either, except when the public service makes it imperiously necessary, and then only to the extent that it requires.

I often quote Ronald Reagan, who is pretty close to my favorite President ever, I will have to say that, but one of my favorite remarks he ever made was that when you look at Federal programs, there is nothing so close to eternal life on Earth as a Federal Government program.

Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclining people in good directions.

If you want the government off your back, get your hands out of its pockets.

I mean, the Obama position has been, 'We think government ought to be spending this money, not the people who earn it.'

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

In these difficult times, when tough decisions are required, the differences between Labour and the Tories are becoming much clearer. One party believes in intervention to reduce social and economic costs and the other believes in market forces and letting things take their course.

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.'

I believe in infrastructure, I believe in investing in your hard assets. Where I think government starts to fail is when it starts getting itself weighed down with the social programs. And I think the American public just feels like a lot of that money is tossed aside and wasted.

What people want is big government that they don't have to pay for.

Government just simply can't do everything for everyone.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.