Political Quotes

“Mr. President, there is an old political axiom that is attributed to Thomas Jefferson, more recently to Gerald Ford, that says: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away. Those words took on a whole new meaning this last week when we found out the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department, Kathleen Sebelius, was issuing new regulations with regard to the health care act that passed last year that would apply to religious-affiliated universities, charities, and hospitals. I think we have to remember exactly why it was that many of our forefathers came to this country in the first place. They came, in many cases, because they were trying to get away from religious persecution in their homelands. So they came to the United States with the desire to start anew and to assert that in this new government they formed that they would protect freedoms, basic freedoms, such as religious liberty. So in the Declaration of Independence they said: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are [the rights to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.--[In order] to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.…”