Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2019-03-25 Mar 25, 2019The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.~ Harry BrowneWe used to be a free people. Now we are hedged in by millions of laws. Harassed by a plague of opportunistic lawyers. Harmed by regulations meant for our protection. Unnecessarily taxed to pay for a suffocating bureaucracy. Drowning in petty paperwork. Stifled by “rights” that rarely benefit anyone.~ Joan BeckThe men who administer public affairs must first of all see that everyone holds onto what is his, and that private men are never deprived of their goods by public men.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero Mar 22, 2019If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance.... We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry.... The state would say to the producer, “Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!”~ Henry GeorgeWe have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.~ Milton FriedmanIt is wrong to take half or more of what people earn; wrong to force some people to pay for the support of others, threatening them with jail if they refuse (are in “noncompliance”).~ Tom Bethel Mar 21, 2019The best way to put more money in people's wallets is to leave it there in the first place.~ Edwin FeulnerAt first it was the incomes of corporations, then of rich citizens, then of well-provided widows and opulent workers, and finally the wealth of housemaids and the tips of waitresses. This is all in line with the ability to pay doctrine. The poor, simply because there are more of them, have more ability to pay than the rich.~ Frank ChodorovOne of the most insidious consequences of the present burden of personal income tax is that it strips many middle-class families of financial reserves. [It] has made the individual vastly more dependent on the State.~ W. H. Chamberlin Mar 20, 2019Subsidies entail politicians’ taking the citizen’s paycheck and then using it to buy his submission.~ James BovardThus, if there exists a law which sanctions slavery or monopoly, oppression or robbery, in any form whatever, it must not even be mentioned. For how can it be mentioned without damaging the respect which it inspires? Still further, morality and political economy must be taught from the point of view of this law; from the supposition that it must be a just law merely because it is a law. Another effect of this tragic perversion of the law is that it gives an exaggerated importance to political passions and conflicts, and to politics in general.~ Frederic BastiatThe root of the evil... lay not in corruption but in the system which bred it, the alliance between industrialists and politicians which produced benefits in the form of tariffs, public lands, and federal subsidies.~ Samuel P. Hays Mar 19, 2019The cult of the omnipotent state has millions of followers in the United States. Americans of today view their government in the same way as Christians view their God; they worship and adore the state and they render their lives and fortunes to it. Statists believe that their lives -- their very being -- are a privilege that the state has given to them. They believe that everything they do is -- and should be -- dependent on the consent of the government. Thus, statists support such devices as income taxation, licensing laws, regulations, passports, trade restrictions, and the like.~ Jacob G. HornbergerThe politicians don’t just want your money. They want your soul. They want you to be worn down by taxes until you are dependent and helpless.~ James Dale DavidsonGovernment is saying to the average citizen every January 1: 'For the next five months you’ll be working for us, for goals we shall determine. Is that clear? After May 5 you may look after your own needs and ambitions, but report back to us next January. Now move along.' ... If nearly half of what you make is spent by someone else, that means that half your work time is spent working for someone else. Call me a radical, but I think that comes dangerously close to being a form of indentured servitude.~ Richard Armey Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print