Top 133 Quotes & Sayings by Sam Brownback - Page 2

Federal waste is a grave disservice to hardworking taxpayers across our great nation, and yet our governmental bureaucracies are riddled with it - whether through unnecessary, duplicative, inefficient, outdated, or failed agencies and programs.

Instead of getting angry at somebody for opposing you on something, you're just praying for them. You just pray blessings on them, blessings on their family.

I grew up taking care of the pigs. I love this country that, you know, somebody can do something like that.

When the Taiwan Relations Act passed in 1979, our biggest concern was preventing the use of military force against Taiwan. Little did we know that our friends on Taiwan could so effectively use the space created by our friendship to revolutionize their political system.

Frankly, one of the problems we have in the country is we're not forming enough families. And that is hurting our economic work, and it's hurting our economic projections, because the best place for a child is within a strong family unit.

Prioritizing spending and maximizing the effectiveness of taxpayer dollars is absolutely essential. We must draw the line, realigning programs when necessary and also eliminating failed programs.

I think we have to secure our borders and make sure that people coming in are coming here not to do us harm.

I love Canada. Canada is a great neighbour. Canada has been a great friend and neighbor for many, many years.

My wife and I are raising five children, and it's tough between two people, let alone with one that's working full-time and is stressed out and coming home to a lot of difficulties.

You can raise a good child in a single-parent family, but it's much more difficult.

As the Cold War melts into history, our first concern should be the preservation and extension of human rights and democracy.

I think the United Nations is a useful format to discuss matters, but I think it's a weak institution in being able to carry out matters and, in many respects even, it has been harmful on things like human rights.

The moral argument is that we give big business a huge tax break, and why do we do it? To get their jobs.

Jon Kyl did a really good job of presenting a case and moving issues. John McCain probably is one of the more effective legislators, getting things on through the process. I always thought, too - and this may seem kind of odd - Richard Shelby was just an effective guy a lot of times at stopping things.

Along with Senator Lieberman and others, I introduced the Energy Security Bill to use existing technologies with a variety of tax incentives to reduce our dependence on oil.

Beijing, much as it has done with Hong Kong, persists in equating 'people power' with instability.

Budgets are matters of priority and prioritizing. It's a high priority.

Conservatives sometimes forget that limiting government is not an end in itself but a means to a better society.

I love serving in the government. I love serving in the Senate.

I think we have lost track of a core Republican principle of limited government and balancing budgets and restraining federal spending. We have got to change the system.

The growth in ethanol and biodiesel is something that I have worked on since I was secretary of agriculture in Kansas. I would like to see a lot more progress, because I think there is a real score to be made on this.

There's no religious test in our country, and there shouldn't be. We're an open, competitive society.

Many of Reagan's listeners thought he was dreaming. But Reagan had faith in freedom. He knew that communism, although militarily powerful, was ideologically dead. He knew what our Founders knew: that, in a truly legitimate government, power does not come out of the barrel of a gun, but only from the consent of the people.

Consider this: The United States held its first presidential election in 1789. It marked the first peaceful transfer of executive power between parties in the fourth presidential election in 1801, and it took another 200 years' worth of presidential elections before the courts had to settle an election.

There is a disturbing reincarnation of socialist and nationalist dictatorships raising their heads around the world and even in our own back yard. You see it in places like Venezuela and Bolivia, stoked in no small part by Cuba, and also in Central Asia, and troubling trends in Russia and China.

I went to law school with a plan of going back home and practicing law to support my farming, and Dad said, 'There's just not room here for us.' So I took off to practice law and got involved in some politics, and the rest just moved on forward.

We need more children raised in the optimum situation, which is between a mom and a dad bonded together for life.

I am one who believes that the market, properly incentivized, can consistently outperform government regulation on achieving objectives.

Refugees are the human dimensions of a failed state.

The CARFA Act is about accountability in the federal government: making sure that taxpayers are getting their money's worth and not being defrauded. This is a bipartisan concept, and it is worthy of broad support across the Congress.

An unlimited America was the vision for the nation set forth by our Founding Fathers. It is the vision enshrined in those two great charters of freedom: our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Many of America's most intractable problems stem from the fact that we have strayed from that vision - and lost direction.

In the aftermath of September 11, it has been made clear to us that our foreign policy can no longer afford to narrowly focus on short-term benefits. For our nation's long-term security, we must be active in promoting American values abroad through our foreign policy.

Culture is more important than politics and government.

The Founding Fathers of our nation believed in the people. They created a new nation based on the radical notion that the people could be free and trusted - that the nation would be great if you trusted the people to be good.

I do think the Obama agenda is the furthest left agenda we've seen since probably LBJ and the Great Society. And the differences have been that instead of him trying to go center-left, he's gone - in my estimation - more left. He's shown the country a much more aggressive liberal, more European style agenda, and that's on a center-right country.

I want to expand the compassionate conservative agenda. I believe life begins in the womb, and we should protect it. But it extends to a child in Darfur or someone living in poverty.

The right to keep and bear arms is a right that Kansans hold dear. The people of Kansas have repeatedly and overwhelmingly reaffirmed their commitment to protecting this fundamental right.

Too often, while well-intentioned, our poverty programs fail the poor. They fail them by keeping them in cycles of dependency.

I have been a long-term environmental advocate for the agriculture industry. I have particularly tried to push carbon farming or carbon sequestration.

Common sense should tell us that positively reinforcing sadistic behavior, as these games do, cannot be good for our children.

The historical relationship between Christians and Jews for most of the two thousand years of Christianity has not been good and it's been mostly persecution by Christians of Jews - not all the time, not every place, but mostly it's been that. I think that's just a terribly regretful thing. I don't see it anywhere in the Scriptures that I read, that Christians are to persecute Jews. I think it's been quite damaging. I think it's been a bad witness.

It is far easier to get divorced from somebody you've been married to for 10 years and have three children by than to fire somebody that's worked for you for one year.

Seats on the [Court] bench are not reserved for causes or interests. They're given to those who will uphold the rule of law so long as the nominee is well-qualified to interpret and apply the law.

Politics are important but your soul lasts forever. So, you know, you make ... decisions on what you think is right or wrong and then you just go forward.

Among the most famous of these Supreme Court cases of exercise of political power I believe are the cases of Roe V. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, two 1973 cases based on false statements which created a constitutional right to abortion.

I've been around the government system and believe me it's built to spend. You've got to change the system, otherwise it's like asking a cultivator to do what a combine does, it just doesn't fit, it won't get it done. You've got to change the system.

As I noted to my colleagues in the Roberts' hearings, in a year between 80 percent to 90 percent of the children in America diagnosed with Down's Syndrome will be killed in the womb simply because they have a positive genetic test which can be wrong, and is often wrong, but they would have a positive genetic test for Down's Syndrome and they will be killed.America is poorer because of such a policy.

It may seem ironic that the judicial branch preserves its legitimacy through refraining from action on political questions. That concept was put forward best by Justice [Felix] Frankfurter, appointed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The people believed that while the courts would be independent, they would defer to the political branches on policy issues.

The court's injected itself in the definition of marriage, deciding whether or not human life is worth protecting, permitting government to transfer private property from one person to another, even interpreting the Constitution on the basis of foreign and international laws.

Narrow scope of judicial power was the reason that people accepted the idea that the federal courts could have the power of judicial review; that is, the ability to decide whether a challenged law comports with the Constitution.

To kill [children in the womb] makes us all the poorer, insensitive, calloused and jaded.

Children of those who have been incarcerated are five times more likely to go to prison than children of parents who have never been incarcerated. The sins of the father visiting the child.

I believe that the core battle of our day is the battle to defend the inherent dignity of each and every person, the inherent beauty of each and every soul to be respected and treated as beautiful, unique, and sacred child of a loving God. No matter where they are, no matter what they look like, no matter what their status, each is noble and should be treated as such. The beauty of the individual is truth and we know it in our hearts.

I'm a Ronald Reagan conservative. I'm an economic conservative, I'm strong military. But I also voice and speak and work hard on the social issues.

We are at our best when we help the weakest. The weak make us strong.

I want to note that, historically, the make-up of the court has changed just as elected branches have change.

In recent years, even as the court has become an increasingly political body, the Senate is not focused on preserving any perceived ideological balance when Democrat presidents have appointed people to the court.

Unborn children can experience pain even more so than adults as the baby has more pain receptors per square inch than at any other time in its life.

[Felix Frankfurter] said courts are not representative bodies. They're not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed and, therefore, most dependable within narrow limits.