“First they give you everything that you want
Then they take back everything that you have
They live upon their feet and they die upon their knees
They can work with satan while they dress like the saints
They know god exists for the devil told them so
They scream my name aloud down into the well below”

Don Soderquist “ Live Learn Lead to Make a Difference https://books.google.com/books?id=s0q7mZf9oDkC&amp;lpg=pg=PP1&amp;dq=Don%20Soderquist&amp;pg=PP1#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;f=false, Thomas Nelson, April 2006 p. 58. <br class="br">On Doing Things Right

The Last Lecture (2008)

Gerald Ford in a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974) <br class="br">Ford has also been quoted as having made a similar statement many years earlier, as a representative to the US Congress: &quot;If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have.&quot; <br class="br">&quot;If Elected, I Promise…&quot; : Stories and Gems of Wisdom by and About Politicians (1960) p. 193 <br class="br">Unsourced variants attributed to Goldwater include:<br>A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.<br>Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have. <br class="br">However, Karl Hess, a speechwriter for Goldwater, quoted Goldwater as having &quot;repeatedly&quot; said during the 1964 campaign that &quot;the government strong enough to give you what you want is strong enough to take it all away.&quot; See The Death of Politics http://fare.tunes.org/books/Hess/dop.html, a Playboy article from 1969. <br class="br">Misattributed

Presidential address to a joint session of Congress (12 August 1974)
Ford has also been quoted as having made a similar statement many years earlier, as a representative to the US Congress: "If the government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away everything you have."
"If Elected, I Promise…" : Stories and Gems of Wisdom by and About Politicians (1960) p. 193
Similar assertions have often been attributed to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. 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."
1970s, Address to Congress (12 August 1974)

Attributed to Reagan from informal remarks to reporters 10 October 1984,and to students and faculty at St. John's University 28 March 1985.[citation needed] 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.
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."
Misattributed
Variant: A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you have.

As quoted in &quot;Husayn ibn Mansur al-Hallaj&quot; at Sidi Muhammad Press http://www.sufimaster.org/teachings/husayn.htm <br class="br">Context: In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised.

&quot;It&#x27;s not about dying&quot;, TEDxCHUV address (13 November 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5WYNf1td-4