Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government...
I want anyone who believes in life, liberty, pursuit of happiness to succeed. And I want any force, any person, any element of an overarching Big Government that would stop your success, I want that organization, that element or that person to fail. ...
You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.
You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job, but it doesn't pay as much. And so, that's what's happened to us is that we have put in so much entitlement into our government, that...
I forget what the relevant American rate is, but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant ma...
The United States being a limited form of government, one of the restrictions to which it is subject is in regard to its power to levy taxes. The States may levy them for a great many purposes for which Congress cannot, because to the States belong a...
Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, Americ...
The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don't invest, their holding too much money. We haven't heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody's afraid of the government ...
But only 'rich' people by definition have the 'extra' money to buy things and invest to create economic growth. Do we really want to tax that 'extra' money away - and give it to the government to spend? Does that make any economic sense outside of po...
Climate change is important to Malawi, but many people see alternative energy more as a means to skip the government and get electricity and power. Deforestation is a huge problem in Malawi, which only adds to the problem. People cut down trees becau...
Politicians all over the world cater to domestic vote banks. They will spend only on what their constituents want. So unless there is a grass root green movement in a nation the politicians will not be willing to spend money on curbing emissions. Mor...
What I'm not saying is that all government spending is bad. It's not - far, far from it, but there is no free lunch, as a former colleague of mine used to say. There is no public tooth fairy. Father Christmas does not work on the Treasury staff this ...
I come from the state of Michigan. We were the first English-speaking government in the world to outlaw the death penalty, back in the 1840s. We have never had, as a state, the death penalty in Michigan. I was raised with that, and even Republicans i...
We need to have a modicum of faith in people's common sense, creativity and will to survive and prosper even in the face of great difficulties and obstacles. If people could keep society running in the aftermath of the Black Death, they could keep it...
I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parents don't teach you anything. Your teachers don't teach you anything. The government doesn't teach you anything. You read it. You don't understand it; you r...
Politics and government have been a terrible place to invest; education has been a terrible place to invest, but that is because the entrenched interests make it a terrible place to invest. The way you invest in those sectors is you go against the en...
One of the main lessons I have learned during my five years as Secretary-General is that broad partnerships are the key to solving broad challenges. When governments, the United Nations, businesses, philanthropies and civil society work hand-in-hand,...
During the Great Depression, levels of crime actually dropped. During the 1920s, when life was free and easy, so was crime. During the 1930s, when the entire American economy fell into a government-owned alligator moat, crime was nearly non-existent....
Let me make this very clear: 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, our digital exhaust is being sucked up by the government. It is being compiled on big server farms and it's being analyzed by different computer programs, looking for any hint that you and I...
Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclinin...
I think a good relationship that Mexico could maintain with the United States and vice versa should be based on trust, on opening - openness and constant dialogue that would allow us essentially to define, share objectives and to work towards those s...
