Ron Paul Talks abt Politics (10 QUOTES)

* Statesmanship in Washington has come to mean one's willingness to abandon any personal beliefs or principles to serve the greater good-- whatever that is. But it is not possible to preserve the rule of law or individual liberty if our convictions are no stronger than this. The more we abandon consistency and a guiding philosophy of liberty, the more we abandon the republic so carefully designed by the Founders. Without a wise consistency, our faltering republic will be replaced by something far less desirable.
* We need to get money out of government; only then will money not be important in politics.
* With the November elections looming, politics is taking priority over sensible policy.
* The reality is that politics involves itself with us whether we like it or not. We can bury our heads in the sand and hope things don't get too bad, or we can fight back when government treats us as its servant rather than its master.
* There is one business that clearly will not go into a slump-the Washington lobbying industry.
* The truth is that many politicians and voters essentially believe in a free lunch. They believe in a free lunch because they don't understand basic economics, and therefore assume government can spend us into prosperity. This is the fallacy that pervades American politics today.
* The rise in corruption in Washington simply mirrors the rise in federal spending.
* A limited, Constitutional government would not tempt special interests to buy the politicians who wield power. The whole process feeds on itself. Everyone is rewarded by ignoring Constitutional restraints, while expanding and complicating the entire bureaucratic state.
* Even when it's recognized that we're traveling down the wrong path, the lack of political courage and the desire for reelection results in ongoing support for the pork-barrel system that serves special interests.
* It seems bizarre that it's so unthinkable to change course if the current policy is failing. Our leaders are like a physician who makes a wrong diagnosis and prescribes the wrong medicine, but because of his ego can't tell the patient he made a mistake. Instead he hopes the patient will get better on his own. But instead of improving, the patient gets worse from the medication wrongly prescribed. This would be abhorrent behavior in medicine, but tragically it is commonplace in politics.