Martin Van Buren Quotes

Now, let me be clear. The path I lay out is not one paved with ever increasing government checks and cradle to grave assurance that government will always be the solution. If this election is a bidding war for who can promise the most goodies and the most benefits, I'm not your president. You have that president today.

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first.

So we [Americans] have a history a taking care of each other. Now, for some strange reason starting sort of in the 20's with Woodrow Wilson, the government started getting involved in everything.

The role of government is to steer us in the right direction, not do all the work for us.

Why is it is claimed that if people won't or can't take care of their own needs, that people in government can do it for them?

There are a lot of good causes out there, but they can't possibly all be served by government.

People still seem to think that they should vote themselves money. They seem to think there is stuff which they think is the government's job, when it's really the individual's job.

If government half a century ago had provided us with all our dinners and breakfasts, it would be the practice of our orators today to assume the impossibility of our providing for ourselves.

Nobody is starving on the streets. We've always taken care of them. We take care of our own; we always have. It is not the government's responsibility.

People in Oklahoma don't wake up every morning wondering what the government is going to do for them.

My concept of government's role in people's lives is that it is limited but legitimate, and essential when people have nowhere else to turn.

When government accepts responsibility for people, then people no longer take responsibility for themselves.

It's not good for government to tell people that the world owes them a living and that things are free.

The time when people really want government is in an emergency.

The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities....In all that the people can individually do for themselves, government ought not interfere.

The best reason to diminish social programs is not to put more money in people's pockets but to put more responsibility in people's pockets.

Many of the liberal people tend to say, "Well, the solution is government." I couldn't disagree more. The government cannot solve the problem and never will. I believe the solution to these problems is the church and that the church should be responsible for caring for the sick, and assisting the poor, and educating.

If government is to serve any purpose it is to do for others what they are unable to do for themselves.

The bigger the government, the less the citizens do for one another. If the state will take care of me and my neighbors, why should I? This is why Western Europeans, people who have lived in welfare states far longer than Americans have, give less to charity and volunteer less time to others than do Americans of the same socioeconomic status.

If people won't spend any money, the government has this moral obligation to do it.

Government should do only those things the people cannot do for themselves.

Government cannot do everything, so we need to first decide what government ought to be doing, then figure out what it's capable of doing, and then follow the jobs we choose to completion.

As the economy faces such difficulties, more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.

If so many Americans are looking for the government to save them, then it is hard to have a dignified search for a shepherd in chief.

People have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don't need government intervening in every step.