Mitch Daniels Quotes

Our morbidly obese federal government needs not just behavior modification but bariatric surgery.

Our first thought is always for those on life's first rung, and how we might increase their chances of climbing.

Our main task is not to see that people of great wealth add to it, but that those without much money have a greater chance to earn some.

If our nation goes over a financial Niagara, we won't have much strength and, eventually, we won't have peace. We are currently borrowing the entire defense budget from foreign investors. Within a few years, we will be spending more on interest payments than on national security. That is not, as our military friends say, a 'robust strategy.'

I certainly believe in limited government but protecting children against injury abuse is certainly inside my sphere of things that the government should do.

Every successful enterprise has a very clear strategic purpose.

If we don't believe in Americans, who will? I do believe. I've seen it in the people of our very typical corner of the nation.

When business leaders ask me what they can do for Indiana, I always reply: 'Make money. Go make money. That's the first act of corporate citizenship. If you do that, you'll have to hire someone else, and you'll have enough profit to help one of those non-profits we're so proud of.'

When they call the slightest spending reductions 'painful', we will say 'If government spending prevents pain, why are we suffering so much of it?' And 'If you want to experience real pain, just stay on the track we are on.'

Among the weeds choking out growth and good government are the hundreds of boards, commissions, and advisory committees that have sprouted over the years. They devour time, money, and energy far beyond any real contribution they make.

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core, and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty.

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we 'cling' to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual - we spend less money than we take in.

No enterprise, small or large, public or private, can remain self-governing, let alone successful, so deeply in hock to others as we are about to be.

We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have-nots. We must always be a nation of haves and soon-to-haves.

We believe that government works for the benefit of private life, and not the other way around.

My record is, far as I know, unimpeachable.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer.

Every citizen who stops smoking, or loses a few pounds, or starts managing his chronic disease with real diligence, is caulking a crack for the benefit of us all.

We see government's mission as fostering and enabling the important realms - our businesses, service clubs, Little Leagues, churches - to flourish.

If freedom's best friends cannot unify around a realistic, actionable program of fundamental change, one that attracts and persuades a broad majority of our fellow citizens, big change will not come

Our fiscal ruin and resulting loss of world leadership will, in their [liberals'] eyes, be not a tragic event but a desirable one.

The president wasn't dragged anywhere, ... In reality, I think, it was his opposition which was dragged upstairs one step at a time from zero to this number that was very close to what the president proposed.

Sure, things could always have been done better, but I just wish people would drop their political hammers for a few weeks, as happened in 2001, and work on the problem at hand

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

[Obama's reelection] would subject the country to what might be a fatal last dose of statism.