Covering for the morning show on NewsTalk 1370, I'm tired...so here are some quotes on government spending, in honor of the planned vote on Toledo's 2008 budget scheduled before City Council today:
"Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." ~ Frédéric Bastiat
"If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side." ~ Orson Scott Card
"When George Washington threw the dollar across the Rappahannock River, he didn't realize he was establishing a precedent for government spending." ~ Harold Coffin
"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature ... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation...it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces." ~ James Garfield, 1877
“The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.” ~ H. L. Mencken
"It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." ~ Justice Robert Houghwout Jackson
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
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2 comments:
Maggie,
When I contemplate the impending fiscal irresponsibility about to be committed, I think of this one:
I’m sure everyone feels sorry for the individual who has fallen by the wayside or who can’t keep up in our competitive society, but my own compassion goes beyond that to the millions of unsung men and women who get up every morning, send the kids to school, go to work, try and keep up the payments on their house, pay exorbitant taxes to make possible compassion for the less fortunate, and as a result have to sacrifice many of their own desires and dreams and hopes. Government owes them something better than always finding a new way to make them share the fruit of their toils with others.
- Ronald Reagan
Tim - that's one of my favs and I've quoted it a couple of times here on Thurber's Thoughts...but it's always timely!
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