Top 123 Quotes & Sayings by Grover Norquist - Page 2

If you let people own their land, they take care of it. That's why privately owned land is always taken care of, and the parks look like cesspools. Nobody takes care of what everybody owns.

Most Republicans have made it very clear they're not interested in raising taxes. They want to reform government.

Someday I hope Americans will not believe that anyone had to spend his or her days fighting for limited government because everyone they know wants maximum freedom and minimum statism.

I'm for tax reform, not tax increases.

My goal in life is to get the federal government down to half its present size and under control, and then I can write murder mysteries.

My wife and I have what's known as mixed marriage. I am a Methodist, she is a Muslim. So we're keeping it in the M's.

It is wrong to divide the nation white against black, native born against immigrant or one religion against another. It is also wrong to divide people by income. East Germany was not an improvement over South Africa. Obama divides Americans against each other. This is wrong.

Smaller government, more individual responsibility, more individual control creates more Republicans. More state power and ownership and control and top-down decision-making creates more Democrats.

We have to have a conversation about whether Obama's plan to increase spending to occupy Afghanistan helps make America a safer country, or not. I think at some point, we may decide that we don't have to have that size military and cost footprint in the country. You look at what you want to accomplish, how many soldiers you need.

As more and more Americans own shares of stock, more and more Americans understand that taxing businesses is taxing them. Regulating businesses is taxing them. They ought to be thinking long-term about their ownership, not just their income, and that they should pay taxes on capital, as well as taxes on labor.

Americans for Tax Reform is a national taxpayer organization dedicated to opposing any and all tax increases. We work at the national, state and local level for lower taxes, less government spending and limited government.

The central issue of our time - of all times - is the size, power and scope of government.

The American taxpayers are a powerful force. They don't want their taxes raised.

Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.

Historically, opposition to immigration in the United States has been racially and religiously motivated in the ugliest, nastiest way possible.

I'm not for no taxes. That would be an anarchist. I am for lower taxes.

I was an anti-communist before I was political in other ways.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

The taxpayer group in every state is always - always referred to as nuts.

People who are willing to stick to a strong pro-life position aren't going to be pushed off a strong anti-tax position. For people who like to think in ideologically cohesive ways, it makes no sense, but that's the way it is.

Taxation is not charity. It is not voluntary. As we shrink the state and make government smaller, we will find that more and more people are able to take care of themselves.

If you raise taxes, it won't reduce the deficit. The other team will simply spend the resources.

Stupider than France is not where we want to be on tax policy.

I was a math guy as a kid. I was really good at math. I wasn't particularly interested in it.

Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.

Our job is to make people free.

Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase.

People learn their politics at a young age and tend to stick with it.

The Republican Party and the conservative free market movement have been presidentially focused for too long.

Conservatives should insist that defense spending be examined with the same seriousness that we demand in examining the books of those government agencies that spend taxpayer money in the name of welfare, the environment, or education.

The welfare state creates its own victim/client constituency. By making individuals free and independent, we reduce the need for 'charity' to those truly needy citizens what we can certainly afford to help through real charity.

It would be unwise for the modern Republican Party to come across as hostile to immigration. That has been the losing position in American history for 200 years.

Spending an extra dollar on the D.C. public school system isn't spending an extra dollar on education. Spending an extra dollar with the Pentagon doesn't buy you an extra dollar on defense. Republicans need to look skeptically at military spending.

Tax reductions are usually simpler and less distortive. I'm certainly willing to look at getting rid of tax deductions/credits, and go to dramatically reduced rates.

Income should be taxed one time at one rate, not again and again.

Everyone would have bigger and safer cars if they didn't have those CAFE standards: corporate average fuel economy.

People are an asset, not a liability. The United States is the most immigrant-friendly nation in the world and the richest country in the world. This is not a coincidence. Those voices that would make us less immigrant-friendly would make us less successful, less prosperous and certainly less American.

We plan to pick up another five seats in the Senate and hold the House through redistricting through 2012. And rather than negotiate with the teachers’ unions and the trial lawyers and the various leftist interest groups, we intend to break them.

We don't need someone who can think. We need someone with enough digits to hold a pen.

All we have to do is replace Obama. ... We are not auditioning for fearless leader. We don't need a president to tell us in what direction to go. We know what direction to go. We want the Ryan budget. ... We just need a president to sign this stuff. We don't need someone to think it up or design it. The leadership now for the modern conservative movement for the next 20 years will be coming out of the House and the Senate.

We want [government] down to the size to where it would fit in a bathtub, and then it could worry about what we were up to.

The RNC has made a concerted effort to work with their allies with a real focus on what we can do to equip candidates with the resources to win in 2014 and beyond. There isn't a week that goes by that I don't see someone from the RNC at our weekly coalition meeting. Keep up the good work.

They tax when you earn a dollar, they tax you when you save it, they tax you when you invest it. If you earn a dividend, they tax it again, and if you're stupid enough to die, they steal up to half.

Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such.

My ideal citizen is the self-employed, homeschooling, IRA-owning guy with a concealed-carry permit. Because that person doesn't need the goddamn government for anything.

When I became 21, I decided that nobody learned anything about politics after the age of 21.

It's the Democrats whose position is that the only problem in Washington, D.C., is the peasants aren't sending enough cash in for the king to spend.

Alexander Hamilton has been on the $10 since 1928, he's been well honored by the country, he was a great Secretary of the Treasury. But of all the people on the currency, the only one who isn't a president.

I don't think Republicans will be fooled into taking this necessary spending and using it to oppose pro-growth tax cuts, using this tragedy and those deaths for his own political desires.

Could I ask if there’s anything in between Step One and Step Two? ‘Oh ye of little faith.’

Home schoolers do not wish to force other parents to home school. Gun owners do not insist that others buy guns, or that hunting be promoted as an alternative lifestyle. It is not the National Rifle Association out lobbying to have government schools read books entitled 'Heather Has Two Hunters' to preschoolers. It is, in fact, the Left that now strives to use state power to impose its morality by forcing all taxpayers to pay for abortions and public "art" that mocks people of faith. It is the Left that forces parents to pay for government schools where they do not wish to send their children.

Which idiot put the GOP convention the same time as 'Burning Man' in Nevada? Is there time to change this?

I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.

The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens -- usually cash -- and keep it for itself.

I want to reduce the size of government in half as a percentage of GNP - gross national product - over the next 25 years. We want to reduce the number of people depending on government so there is more autonomy and more free citizens.

We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.

We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals, and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship.

No Republican could expect to win the GOP nod after betraying his party's rank and file.

What Mae West said about sex is true about taxes. All tax cuts are good tax cuts; even bad tax cuts are good tax cuts.

One of the reasons some of the advocates of ever larger government and more government intrusiveness get nervous about discussions of the actual cost of government is that they fear if the people had a discussion about what government costs, the true cost of taxes, that they might not want as much government as they are presently getting.