Martin McGuinness Quotes

The government is good at one thing. It knows how to break your legs, and then hand you a crutch and say, "See if it weren't for the government, you wouldn't be able to walk".

It's important to realize that whenever you give power to politicians or bureaucrats, it will be used for what they want, not for what you want.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Finding a 'sacrificial lamb' on whom to tag blame for complicated problems is an important instrument in the toolkit of politicians, because it deflects blame for the nation's economic woes away from their own regulatory lapses, economic mismanagement and coddling to labor unions.

When you see government leaders really bullying business, you know that government's economic policy is failing. They get angry and they get desperate.

I have the happy circumstance of either being accused of political grandstanding on the one hand or cover-ups on the other.

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to make the right decision' - they prejudice that electorate against the very proposals they want it to accept and undermine public confidence in themselves.

If members of the security apparatus could, with impunity, keep from those elected by the people that which they're entitled to know - or worse, feed false information - those who could control the classified data could be the real decision makers.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.

If I were to give you a list of names of the people, world political figures, who have been assisted by the CIA, and even assisted to office around the world, you'd be astonished and probably wouldn't believe it. But it's very long, and the names are very distinguished.

Therefore, I feel convinced that any political picture can be changed to suit the needs of the powers that be.

The foundations and the intent of the Affordable Care Act are laudable. The way it's being implemented is a disaster.

Trouble is, we call politics a game, but it isn't one. There is no referee, and the teams make up the rules as they go along. You can't cry foul or offside in politics. Almost anything goes.

No matter how you rearrange President Obama's inner circle, it still looks, smells and tastes like a rotten Chicago deep-dish pizza.

Presidents tend to tinker, you know, and mess everything up.

It is a tragedy indeed that new generations, taking office, attribute failures in governance to insufficient power, and seek more of it.

Politicians always interfere with what other professions are doing

Going to war was a mistake -- a big mistake. You and your administration misled us into this war.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

I can't stand the idea of being demagogued: that is, put down by a president who has never created any jobs and who doesn't even understand how the economy works.

Vladimir Putin has to create foreign enemies, and he also has to justify... he has to claim... he can't acknowledge that there's a legitimate protest against his authoritarian rule, so he's got to blame it on Hilary Clinton.

The idea that Donald Trump committed an abuse of power by bringing politics into a foreign relationship is a joke. They all do it. Trump is just more open about it.

One of the reasons the American public holds unelected government officials in such low esteem is that they are never held accountable for their failures.