Rand Paul Government Quotations

Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant?

I have a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words. We've come to take our government back.

I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, there is something profoundly un-American about using the brute force of government to bully someone.

The government has a history of not treating people fairly, from the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II to African-Americans in the Civil Rights era.

You can't have it both ways. You can't tell me that you're taxed enough already, and that you want constitutional government and then in the next breath say, 'Bring me home some bacon.' The pig has been picked clean.

You know, when Republicans were in charge, we doubled the debt. But, now, our concern is the Democrats are in charge and they're tripling the debt. So, really, our concern is that we want smaller government.

The history of African-American repression in this country rose from government-sanctioned racism. Jim Crow laws were a product of bigoted state and local governments.

Big and oppressive government has long been the enemy of freedom, something black Americans know all too well.

Even before ObamaCare, the government took care of the bottom 5 or 10 percent of the public who were on Medicaid.

I, for one, will remain constantly vigilant of a government that admits its transgressions of liberty only when they are caught lying.

I would argue that the objective evidence shows that big government is not a friend to African Americans.

The Supreme Court must strike down the government's illegal spying program as a violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy.

Because Republicans believe that the federal government is limited in its function-some have concluded that Republicans are somehow inherently insensitive to minority rights. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The government can't even do a good job of something as simple as running the Post Office. How can it be expected to do a good job with something really important, like educating our children?

The realization is dawning that government doesn't work. In Silicon Valley, they already get this. And they are bright enough to be asking what we can do to solve problems.

One of the things, one of the things that really got to me was the thing in Houston where you had the government, the mayor actually, trying to get the sermons of ministers. When the government tries to invade the church to enforce its own opinion on marriage, that's when it's time to resist.

For too long, we've attached some mythic notion to government solutions, and yet, 40 years after we began the War on Poverty, poverty still abounds.

I think the over-militarization of local police forces is also true of the over-militarization of the federal government, so I don't really run and hide from the comment that I think there are 48 federal agencies that have SWAT teams.

We should not have the U.S. government buying stock in American industries - the financial industry or any other industry.

What ObamaCare did was take some of the things we did for the poor and expanded the government to basically the whole marketplace.

Really, having a gun registry and having to rely on the government to keep it secret, the government isn't so great at keeping confidences.

You don't set up an implicit promise from the federal government that everybody is getting bailed out.

Government can supply bread, but it can't mend a broken spirit.

The Founders never intended for Americans to trust their government. Our entire Constitution was predicated on the notion that government was a necessary evil, to be restrained and minimized as much as possible.

I am running for president to return our country to the principles of liberty and limited government.

I really think that discrimination and racism is a horrible thing. And I don't want any form of it in our government, in our public sphere.

The Constitution was not written to restrain the citizen's behavior, it was writtne to restrain the government's behavior.

For liberty to expand, government must shrink. For the economy to grow, government must get out of the way.

We should not have the U.S. government buying stock in American industries - the financial industry or any other industry.

To put everyone in government housing and food stamps and bring them in from around the world I think is a mistake. To give of your own money, I've given to my church. My church has helped people that came from Bosnia. That's a good thing.

You wonder why your government's completely broken? We lurch from deadline to deadline, and it's on purpose really. We do deadline to deadline because ... 'we've got to go. It's spring break, we're going to be late for spring break, and we've got to go, so we've got to finish this up before we go.'

The other thing to realize is that almost all these shootings, including this shooting [in San-Bernardino], happened in a government building where people are not allowed to defend themselves. While it's not the ultimate answer, the ultimate answer would be no violence, part of the answer is saying, "We need to allow people to defend themselves."

The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn't say keep religion out of government.

Perhaps it is time to be more careful what we ask government to do, and where we allow it to become part of our lives.

I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they've been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they've been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders. It wouldn't be that they are Islamic. But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.

What is immoral for an individual to do, is immoral for a government to do

I went to my first national convention in 1976, when my family supported [Ronald] Reagan over [Gerald] Ford, so we've always been Republicans, but we've always wanted the Republican Party to be the party of fiscally conservative, limited-government types. And I think, sometimes, we haven't done that as well.

I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who's handicapped, it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100,000 elevator.

It is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.

I think we have a Tea Party mandate, and that Tea Party mandate is for good-government type of things, things like term limits, things like a balanced budget amendment, things like read the bills for goodness sakes, things like that maybe Congress should only pass legislation that they apply to themselves as well.

We don't need bigger government. We need to shrink the size of government.

I would prefer the [USA] government to be the policeman and not the businessman.

When the government tries to invade the church to enforce its own opinion on [gay] marriage, that's when it's time to resist.