Ron Paul Talks abt Individual Responsibility (31 QUOTES)

* This nation was founded on principles of self-reliance, but we've allowed ourselves to become far too dependent on government.
* Good intentions frequently lead to unintended bad consequences. Tough choices, doing what is right, often leads to unanticipated good results.
* When it comes to decency, the American people should stop looking to government and start looking at themselves.
* Everybody complains about pork, but members of Congress keep spending because voters do not throw them out of office for doing so. The rotten system in Congress will change only when the American people change their beliefs about the proper role of government in our society.
* The experience of working hard, saving for a downpayment, and buying a home is the essence of the true American dream. Eventually the beneficiaries of government programs stop thinking of themselves as independent citizens, and start viewing themselves as wards of the state.
* It is impossible to maintain a free society when more and more people look to the state to provide what Americans used to provide for themselves.
* Law should reflect moral standards, of course, but morality comes from religion, from philosophy, from societal standards, from families, and from responsible individuals. We make a mistake when we look to government for moral leadership.
* In a free society every citizen gains a sense of himself as an individual, rather than developing a group or victim mentality. This leads to a sense of individual responsibility and personal pride, making skin color irrelevant. Rather than looking to government to correct what is essentially a sin of the heart, we should understand that reducing racism requires a shift from group thinking to an emphasis on individualism.
* When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.
* Freedom over one's physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies.
* We owe our Founding Fathers a tremendous debt of gratitude. They created a society based on the radical idea that the purpose of government was to protect the rights of the individual, preexisting rights granted by God rather than the state. For the first time in human history, a government was designed to serve the individual, rather than vice versa.
* This triumph of the individual over the claims of the state, the King, the collective, or society represents a great gift to humanity.
* We should remember, however, that we hardly would want to live in a rigid totalitarian society completely free of danger. This nation was founded on principles of self-reliance, but we've allowed ourselves to become far too dependent on government.
* The American dream is based on making a better life for one's children, despite the empty rhetoric of the class-warfare politicians in Washington. Building wealth is not sinister, it is admirable. Our tax rules should encourage the decidedly American virtue of saving for the future.
* Congress could clean up its financial mess, but ultimately it is voters who must demand accountability for their tax dollars. Remember that you give government at all levels nearly half of everything you earn. If you invested that much into a private company, don’t you think you would keep a close eye on it and demand accountability as a shareholder? The only thing we know for sure about the federal budget is that it will go up each year unless and until voters remove the politicians who insist on taxing, spending, and borrowing us to death.
* Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security.
* Governments should just get out of the way and let individuals make their own decisions about how they want to relate to the world.
* I want to just tell people to live their own lives and assume responsibility for themselves.
* Liberty, freedom, and self-determination. Those goals are as worthy of our attention today as they were 228 years ago in a hot convention hall in Philadelphia. Just as devotion to those goals brought forth this great nation then, a renewed adherence to liberty can save our nation today.
* The principle of a servant government is the ideal that made America the greatest nation on earth.
* Let it not be said that we did nothing.
* We have come to view the state as our protector and the solution to every problem.
* Every generation must resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the most dangerous time in American history.
* America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
* The failed history of welfarism and socialism in America shows that government programs ultimately erode our culture by damaging personal virtue.
* Our job is to take responsibility for ourselves to improve our well-being and to improve and work with excellence, and that's what freedom is all about.
* This idea of personal liberty which might allow individuals to do things that others might not approve of is also exactly the liberty that we need to practice our religion and keep the government off our backs.
* Freedom doesn't give you perfection. But everybody who's responsible for their selves, their house, their household, or their private property should provide the protection.
* The job of the government is to provide liberty and protect liberty. The people are supposed to take care of themselves. Both in a personal way as well as in economic way. And we‘re not supposed to tell other countries how to live. That‘s what the Constitution dictates to us.
* The biggest threat to your privacy is the government. We must drastically limit the ability of government to collect and store data regarding citizens’ personal matters.
* We can hardly expect more government to cure our current health care woes. As with all goods and services, medical care is best delivered by the free market, with competition and financial incentives keeping costs down. When patients spend their own money for health care, they have a direct incentive to negotiate lower costs with their doctor. When government controls health care, all cost incentives are lost.