“Since the dawn of the twentieth century, we have been told thatthe federal government has the answers to solve all of society’s problems.We have been promised, by supposedly serious men who havesworn an oath before God and man, that if we just give Washington,D.C., more of our money and more of our personal freedom, theproblems of poverty, illiteracy, racism, unemployment, crime, andcorruption will all be solved. Today, each and every one of theseproblems is worse than it has ever been. The federal government andits blood-sucking bureaucracies do not have a solution to the problem,they are the problem.”
“The serious problems in life...are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly.”
“Art is solving problems that cannot be formulated before they have been solved. The shaping of the question is part of the answer.”
“If you listen to the political discourse in America today, you would think that all our problems have been caused by the Mexicans of the Chinese or the Muslims. The reality is that we have caused our own problems. Whatever has happened has been caused by isolating ourselves or blaming others.”
“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to bemanaged by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and ofthe people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has thecapacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear theburden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higherprice.”
“The activities of automobile manufacturers, commercial real estate developers, and the federal government have been far more important in determining patterns of transportation than consumer choice.”