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A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.
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Attributed to Reagan from informal remarks to reporters 10 October 1984,and to students and faculty at St. John's University 28 March 1985. The statement was made a decade earlier by Gerald Ford in an address to a Joint Session of the Congress, 12 August 1974. It is sometimes attributed to Thomas Jefferson and Barry Goldwater.
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Variant: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.
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Similar assertions have often been attributed to Barry Goldwater. Some of the inspiration for such expressions may lie in "The Criminality of the State" by Albert Jay Nock in American Mercury (March 1939) where he stated: "You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you."

 

Ronald Reagan

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Although I am still in favour of a National Government in these difficult times, and shall probably be found in the great majority of cases in the Government Lobby, there are some issues that have arisen, or are likely to arise, upon which I am unable to give the Government the support which it has, perhaps, the right to expect from those receiving the Government Whip. It occurs to me, therefore, that it would perhaps be more satisfactory if I was no longer regarded as being among the supporters of the present Administration.

 

Harold Macmillan

 

There are those in America today who have come to depend absolutely on government for their security. And when government fails they seek to rectify that failure in the form of granting government more power. So, as government has failed to control crime and violence with the means given it by the Constitution, they seek to give it more power at the expense of the Constitution. But in doing so, in their willingness to give up their arms in the name of safety, they are really giving up their protection from what has always been the chief source of despotism — government. Lord Acton said power corrupts. Surely then, if this is true, the more power we give the government the more corrupt it will become. And if we give it the power to confiscate our arms we also give up the ultimate means to combat that corrupt power. In doing so we can only assure that we will eventually be totally subject to it. When dictators come to power, the first thing they do is take away the people's weapons. It makes it so much easier for the secret police to operate, it makes it so much easier to force the will of the ruler upon the ruled.

 

Ronald Reagan

 

Finally, I believe in an America with a government of men devoted solely to the public interests - men of ability and dedication, free from conflict or corruption or other commitment - a responsible government that is efficient and economical, with a balanced budget over the years of the cycle, reducing its debt in prosperous times - a government willing to entrust the people with the facts that they have - not a businessman's government, with business in the saddle, as the late Secretary McKay described this administration of which he was a member - not a labor government, not a farmer's government, not a government of one section of the country or another, but a government of, for and by the people.

 

John F. Kennedy

 

The evidence reaching us from the country leaves no doubt that the material for the work is abundant, and that it needs only the hand of legislation to give it legal sanction and the hand of the Executive to give it practical shape and efficiency. One of the greatest perplexities of the Government is to avoid receiving troops faster than it can provide for them. In a word, the people will save their Government if the Government itself will do its part only indifferently well.

 

Abraham Lincoln