Will Rogers Quotes

Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for.

It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for.

Most Americans recognize that whatever the government program is, no matter how essential it is, it's waste.

Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

Big government doesn't work! It just doesn't work!

I don't believe we need any more taxes. We need to curtail the size of government. That seems to be a common thread among a majority of Americans out there that understand that we have to limit the size and scope of our government.

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.

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

I hate big government, but I really hate a government that doesn't work. So when 'they say we either have to raise taxes or cut core services,' it's actually a 'false choice.'

The Republican name used to be synonymous with limiting the size and scope of government, and we need to re-establish that reputation. We must work to eliminate government waste, make certain taxpayer dollars go to meaningful programs, and leave resources directly with the people.

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

My slogan when I ran was that there is no such thing as government money, there is only taxpayer's money, and that cut pretty deep.

The question today is not whether the government is too small or too small, but whether or not it works

We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving the people.

You have got to be willing to pay for the government you want.

The problem is that the energy in the Republican Party today is not directed at how to make government work better. It is directed against government.

It is true that liberty is not free, nor is it easy. But tyranny - even varying degrees of it - is much more difficult, and much more expensive. The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty.

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

It costs ten times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, 'What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power.' But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

Our goal is to shrink government to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.

We should distinguish carefully skepticism about Big Government from contempt for all government.

Incredibly, whenever I have proposed the theory that half of government workers could be cut, current and former federal employees I know have all agreed.

The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.