Amber Rudd Quotes

All government is intended for the benefit of the people.

We need government to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.

I've always believed as a value that the government has a vital - not overwhelming, but vital - role to play in furthering human welfare and good. I think we have an important supportive role to play, hopefully intelligent and sensible.

Every society, all government, and every kind of civil compact therefore, is or ought to be, calculated for the general good and safety of the community.

It would be foolish to suggest that government is a good custodian of aesthetic goals. But, there is no alternative to the state.

The final end of government is not to exert restraint but to do good.

Government is a progressive instrument for the common good.

Our object today should be not to weaken government in competition with other centers of power, but rather to strengthen it as the agency charged with responsibility for the common good. That government is best which governs best.

The real needs of the people ought never give way to the imaginary wants of the state.

That’s the function of government—to do for people what they cannot do for themselves.

Of course we should have only the government we need. But we must insist on all the government we need.

Upon the principles of reason, the good of many is preferable to the good of a few or of one; a lasting good is to be preferred before a temporary, the public before the private.

An individual, in promoting his own interest, may injure the public interest; a nation, in promoting the general welfare, may check the interest of a part of its members.

The idea of the state is, or should be, a very limited, prescribed idea. The state looks after the defense of the realm, and other matters - raising revenue to pay for things which are for all of us, and so on. That idea has turned turtle now. The state isn't any longer perceived as an institution which exists to serve us.

Formerly government was the responsibility of people; now people were the responsibility of government.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

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.

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

What has gone catastrophically wrong in England and the States is that for 30 years we've lost the ability to talk about the state in positive terms. We've raised a generation or two of young people who don't think to ask, 'What can the state do that is good?'

Providing for the common good, making people feel secure in their communities and homes - this is the central job of government. it's why all of us are here serving our state and our people.

Government is either organized benevolence or organized madness; its peculiar magnitude permits no shading.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. People have the right to expect that these wants will be provided for by this wisdom.

Government health care changes the relationship between the citizen and the state, and, in fact, I think it's an assault on citizenship.

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.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.