Barack Obama Quotes

We should distinguish carefully skepticism about Big Government from contempt for all government.

I believe that smaller government is better government. But I also believe that in the areas where government does play a legitimate role, we should demand that it is done better.

We can't do without government, but we do need it to be more effective.

The issue isn't more or less government. It's dumb vs. smart government.

The question of our time is rapidly becoming can government get things done?

The debate on how to shrink the federal government is at the core of our problem of government not doing its job.

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.

I was elected to come to an incredibly dysfunctional capital and make the government work better, and that's what I'm doing.

We don't need more government, we just need the government we have to work smarter and more efficiently.

"Big" government? Who wants that? I just want effective government. That means America's government needs to be big in some places, small in others and non-existent in others.

We do not believe that if you cut back what government does you diminish its authority. On the contrary, a government that did less, and therefore did better, would strengthen its authority.

While we may argue about the size of government, the Republican Party has not been a party that says, 'I want to destroy government.'

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

No one has yet succeeded in reducing the size or scope of the federal government.

There was a time that you could say the least government was the best—but not in the nation's most populous state.

I don’t want to kill the government. I just want to shrink it down to a small enough size that I can flush it down the toilet.

I do think there are some irreducible inefficiencies in government. But we still need to have government; we still need to make government effective if we can.

Obama is trying to paint us as a caricature, as if we're some bizarre individualists who are hardcore libertarians. It's a false dichotomy and intellectually lazy. Of course we believe in government. We think government should do what it does really well, but that it has limits.

My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.

For some in Washington, it's become sport to pick on the federal workforce. I think they do so unjustly. The very foundation of a stable America is having a government that functions well. Many countries have dysfunctional governments, because they don't have a good government workforce.

Concerns about the size and role of government are what seem to leave reformers stammering and speechless in town-hall meetings. The right wants to have a debate over fundamental principles; elected Democrats seem incapable of giving it to them.

Liberals often don't see the problems, and conservatives don't see the promise, of government.

I don’t want to eliminate government. I just want to shrink it down to the size that you can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the tub.

Administration is the essence of government, and its quality is a prime condition of civic comfort.

The problem is that the energy in the Republican Party today is not directed at how to make government work better. It is directed against government.