Jane Welsh Carlyle Quotes

I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.

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

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

It is a good thing that we do not get as much government as we pay for.

The many - and by the way, white, black, Asian, it covers everybody. Evangelicals, conservatives, Tea Partyers. Everybody has been hurt by the incompetent way that our government is run. By incompetent negotiators.

How can thinking people believe that a government that cannot deliver the mail can deliver gas better than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, and the rest?

History has tried hard to teach us that we can't have good government under politicians. Now, to go and stick one at the very head of the government couldn't be wise.

The tow pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget.

A bureaucracy is sure to think that its duty is to augment official power, official business, or official members, rather than to leave free the energies of mankind; it overdoes the quantity of government, as well as impairs its quality. The truth is, that a skilled bureaucracy is, though it boasts of an appearance of science, quite inconsistent with the true principles of the art of business.

The government increasingly resembles somebody who is trying to give the kiss of life to a corpse.

[Peter] Drucker says that modern government can do only two things well: wage war and inflate the currency. Its the aim of my administration to prove Mr Drucker wrong.

The salient feature of America in the Age of Obama is a failed government class institutionally committed to living beyond its means, and a citizenry too many of whom are content to string along.

Government schools can go for decades delivering low-quality services, and what's the result? The people who manage it earn higher pay. It's nearly impossible to fire the incompetents. And, taxpayers, who support the service, are given higher tax bills.

I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.

If more government is the answer, then it was a really stupid question.

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

All the things I resent most about out-of-control government and the politicians who support it, grow it, or simply fail to deal with it, what angers me above all else is the knowledge that all of this waste and ruin is entirely preventable.

I want to bring the greatest people into government, because we're way behind. We don't make good deals any more. I say it all the time in speeches. We don't make good deals anymore; we make bad deals. Our trade deals are a disaster.

The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life - this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.

It is inexcusable for the White House and Congress to not even make the effort to find at least some offsets to this new spending, ... No one in America believes the federal government is operating at peak efficiency and can't tighten its belt.

The government's like a mule, it's slow and it's sure; it's slow to turn, and it's sure to turn the way you don't want it.

Talk about threats to national security -- how about government so big, so complicated and so unmanageable, it cant get out of its own way?

Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.

Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?

There is in the American Government...a want of unity.... The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.