A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
William F. Buckley, Jr.Read
Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.
Interpretation
Government's support is limited to its ability to exert control over individuals.
This quote highlights the notion that any assistance or benefit provided by the government is inherently linked to its capacity to regulate and influence the lives of its citizens. It suggests a dynamic relationship where the extent of governmental support corresponds directly with its power to impose rules and enact policies, reflecting a fundamental tension between liberty and authority.
In practice
During a debate on the responsibilities of government, this quote can illustrate how government intervention and support are balanced with personal freedoms.
A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.
I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence.
You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters.
Under its current form, that is imperialism-controlled, debt is a cleverly managed re-conquest of Africa, aiming at subjugating its growth and development through foreign rules. Thus, each one of us becomes the financial slave, which is to say a true slave.
The Labour Party is a moral crusade or it is nothing.
I suppose, indeed, that in public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.
Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed.
Look: I don't want to live with a nuclear Iran. I would like to make it uncomfortable for them to seek it.
Congress is, after all, not a body of laymen unfamiliar with the commonplaces of our law. This legislation was the formulation of the two Judiciary Committees, all of whom are lawyers, and the Congress is predominately a lawyers' body.
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