Rush Limbaugh Quotes

If we have more people on the receiving end of government - more people as the middle class becomes sucked in more and more to these entitlement programs, for example - then we're going to be in a place where it's going to be hard to go back. It's going to be hard to go back again. It's going to be hard to take away stuff. It's not impossible.

Liberals measure compassion by counting the number of people receiving government help.

The more people who are dependent on government handouts, the more votes the left can depend on for an ever-expanding welfare state.

Today we are ending welfare as we know it.

In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

I don't think you expand entitlements when so many people are dependent on government and when the money the federal government is offering is going to be taken away from you after just a couple of years.

Too many Mainers are dependent on government handouts. Government dependency has not - and never will - create prosperity.

I don't believe in welfare.

Could we do without the social safety net, without Social Security, without Medicare, without farm subsidies, without unemployment compensation, without school lunch programs, without housing assistance? Of course we could. But we would not be a civilized society and we would not be an American nation any of us would be proud of.

If you throw a welfare state into the middle of a democracy, it’s very hard to get rid of the beast.

Americans oppose public intervention or regulation if it helps others, but favor it if it helps them — take social security, disaster relief, public works projects, for example.

Even in the United States, 'you have a sort of welfare state, even if you don't want to admit it -- you don't allow people to die on the street.

People like entitlements. That's why we spend so much on them.

The welfare state, which grew out of post-war solidarity, has for decades been based on the principle that those who pay into the system are entitled to expect that the safety net will be there for them when they fall on hard times.

Indeed, one of the least-talked-about dangers of our ever-expanding entitlement culture is that it threatens the viability of these necessary programs for those who genuinely need and use them as a bridge to a better life.

At its core, government welfare is predicated on a false compassion.

The welfare state has always been judged by its good intentions, rather than its bad results.

We shouldn't turn the safety net into a hammock. It should actually be a safety net.

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.

Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office - like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security - are inalienable rights. They are not.

The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state - you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax - but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned them.

This, by the way, is the welfare state in action: Its a whole bunch of special interest groups screwing consumers and taxpayers, and making them think they're really benefiting.

And he said that 47%-that's pretty high-47% of Americans are basically welfare bums who are mooching off the government. And then he said, 'My job is not to worry about those people.' You know, where do people get this stuff that Mitt Romney is a heartless, calculating c**ksucker?

The seeds of today's runaway government were planted when it was decided that government should help those who can't help themselves. From that modest, compassionate beginning to today's out-of-control mega-state, there's a straight, unbroken line. Once the door was open, once it was settled that the government should help some people at the expense of others, there was no stopping it.

I'm not living off of any taxpayer money. If I am - if it's food stamps, it's a temporary resource.