Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.

The government is like a baby's
alimentary canal, with a happy
appetite at one end and no
responsibility at the other.

The fatal attraction of government is that it allows busybodies to impose decisions on others without paying any price themselves. That enables them to act as if there were no price, even when there are ruinous prices - paid by others.

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly for the good of the people, becomes a self-serving corporation. To keep things under control, it proliferates law of ever-increasing complexity and unintelligibility, and hinders productive work by demanding so much accounting on paper that the record of what has been done becomes more important than what has actually been done. [...] The Taoist moral is that people who mistrust themselves and one another are doomed.

When it comes down to it, government is simply an abandonment of responsibility on the assumption that there are people, other than ourselves, who really know how to manage things. But the government, run ostensibly for the good of the people, becomes a self-serving corporation. To keep things under control it proliferates laws of ever-increasing complexity and unintelligibility, and hinders productive work by demanding so much accounting on paper that the record of what has been done becomes more important than what has actually been done. The Taoist moral is that people who mistrust themselves and one another are doomed.

Nothing is so galling to a people not broken in from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words, a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drink, and wear.

A child may not know how to feed itself, or what to eat, yet it knows hunger.

Children come into the world with empty brain, it depends with what we feed them

Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

What sort of government is it that permits so many children to go to school hungry, without even a morsel of food in their stomachs? It cannot be! It must not be!

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.

Government in its infancy had no regular and permanent form. For want of a sufficient fund of philosophy and experience, men could see no further than the present inconveniences, and never thought of providing remedies for future ones, but in proportion as they arose.

What is the government? nothing, unless supported by opinion.

A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.1 — President Gerald Ford