“I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.”

“With our eyes fixed on the future, but recognizing the realities of today, we will achieve our destiny to be as a shining city on a hill for all mankind to see.”

“I think, too, that we've got to recognize that where the preservation of a natural resource like the redwoods is concerned, that there is a common sense limit. I mean, if you've looked at a hundred thousand acres or so of trees-you know, a tree is a tree, how many more do you need to look at?Opposing expansion of Redwood National Park.”

“Never let the things you can't do, stop you from doing what you can.”

“Self-defense is not only our right; it is our duty.”

“We need to throw the resources at this that are necessary. But like I say, we are not spending money. I mean, if we buy these assets intelligently, the United States Treasury will make money. I mean, it's borrowing money. It's just a few percent a year.”

“The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.”

“In politics, throwing the taxpayers' money at disasters is supposed to show your compassion. But robbing Peter to pay Paul is not compassion. It is politics.”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“The goof man, in dealing with his people, taxes them with luxury.”

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

“There is not a man in the country that can't make a living for himself and family. But he can't make a living for them and his government, too, the way his government is living. What the government has got to do is live as cheap as the people”

“If I were the treasury secretary or head of the Fed, you know, I would try to scare the hell the out of the private sector and say, you better save this because you're going down with the ship.”

“The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.”

“Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing, and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even.”

“The burden of the national debt consists not in its being so many millions, or so many hundred millions, but in the quantity of taxes collected every year to pay the interest. If this quantity continue the same, the burden of the national debt is the same to all intents and purposes, be the capital more or less.”

“For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals. You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?”

“What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village and hamlet in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm as they do.”

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”