Taxation Quotes - Page 14

• Now, legal plunder can be committed in an infinite number of ways. Thus we have an infinite number of plans for organizing it: tariffs, protection, benefits, subsidies, encouragements, progressive taxation, public schools, guaranteed jobs, guaranteed profits, minimum wages, a right to relief, a right to the tools of labor, free credit, and so on, and so on.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Encouragement, Jobs, School

  Frederic Bastiat (2006). “The Law”, p.17, Cosimo, Inc.

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• This is the Great Theatre of Life. Admission is free, but the taxation is mortal. You come when you can, and leave when you must. The show is continuous. Goodnight.

  Robertson Davies

  Theatre, Admission, Shows

  Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA

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• Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Body, Coercion, States

  Geoff Mulgan (2006). “Good and Bad Power: The Ideals and Betrayals of Government”

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• By taking out a loan, I am committing myself to years of interest repayments, and therefore to years of wage slavery. And the UK has been borrowing like crazy since 1694, when the Bank of England was invented. This means that we are locked into high taxation to pay for 300 years of wars and other costly and generally disastrous state enterprises.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Crazy, War, Mean

  "Ideas for modern living: usury" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. April 3, 2010.

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• Idleness and pride tax with a heavier hand than kings and parliaments. If we can get rid of the former, we may easily bear the latter.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Kings, 4th Of July, Pride

  Benjamin Franklin (2010). “Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography & Selected Writings”, p.64, American Liberty Press

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• Taxation is not a method by which the community corporately provides itself with essential services, but a fund to be divided between different interests with political claims upon the state.

  Neville Chamberlain

  Community, Political, Liberty

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• The tendency of taxation is, to create a class of persons, who do not labour: to take from those who do labour the produce of that labour, and to give it to those who do not labour.

  William Cobbett

  Class, Giving, Liberty

  "Paper Against Gold and Glory Against Prosperity. Or, an Account of the Rise, Progress, Extent and Present State of the Funds and of the Papermoney of Great-Britain Etc".

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• Our loyalty lies with little taxpayers, not big spenders. What our critics really believe is that those in Washington know better how to spend your money than you, the people, do. But we're not going to let them do it, period.

  Ronald Reagan

  Loyalty, Lying, Believe

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• No taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.

  George Washington

  Taxes, Tax Day, Inconvenient

  George Washington, United States. President (1789-1797 : Washington) (1847). “Washington's Farewell Address to the People of the United States of America: Published in September, 1796”, p.9

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• Would it not be better to simplify the system of taxation rather than to spread it over such a variety of subjects and pass through so many new hands.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Hands, Simplify, Spread

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia II, Correspondence 1782-1786”, p.382, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Taxes should be continued by annual or biennial reeactments, because a constant hold, by the nation, of the strings of the public purse is a salutary restraint from which an honest government ought not wish, nor a corrupt one to be permitted, to be free.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Government, Wish, Politics

  Thomas Jefferson (1855). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson”, p.195

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• If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working.

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, Day Care, Parent

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.319, Hoover Press

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• People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.

  Joseph Sobran

  Ideas, Creating, Government

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• There can be no such thing as 'fairness in taxation.' Taxation is nothing but organized theft, and the concept of a 'fair tax' is therefore every bit as absurd as that of 'fair theft.'

  Murray Rothbard

  Liberty, Fairness, Economics

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• Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.

  Learned Hand

  Money, Patriotic, Government

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• The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.

  Milton Friedman

  Thinking, Government, Issues

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• In a fully free society, taxation-or, to be exact, payment for governmental services-would be voluntary.

  Ayn Rand

  Would Be, Payment, Free Society

  Ayn Rand (1988). “The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z”, p.493, Penguin

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• Deficit financing proper is rather the process whereby a Government spends more money that it withdraws from the economy by taxation, borrowing, running down reserves, etc.; thereby causing in most circumstances, and very acutely in ours, monetary inflation and severe pressure on the balance of payments.

  John James Cowperthwaite

  Running, Government, Balance

  Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (p. 249), March 29, 1967.

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• Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.

  Robert Toombs

  War, Home, Power

  Robert Augustus Toombs (1860). “Speech of Hon. Robert Toombs: On the Crisis. Delivered Before the Georgia Legislature, December 7, 1860”, p.4

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• How is the government going to get the extra taxes? Out of the rich, or just out of the poor, as usual?

  Will Rogers

  Government, America, Usual

  Will Rogers, Bryan B. Sterling, Frances N. Sterling (1993). “Will Rogers' World: America's Foremost Political Humorist Comments on the Twenties and Thirties--and Eighties and Nineties”, p.99, Rowman & Littlefield

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• He who has the base necessities of life should pay nothing; taxation on him who has a surplus may, if need be; extend to everything beyond necessities.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Needs, May, Pay

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• Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.

  Ronald Reagan

  Government, Self, Competition

  Ronald Reagan, Michael Reagan (2016). “The Last Best Hope: The Greatest Speeches of Ronald Reagan”, p.62, Humanix Books

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• The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free.

  Calvin Coolidge

  Country, People, Principles

  Calvin Coolidge (1924). “Calvin Coolidge, His Ideals of Citizenship as Revealed Through His Speeches and Writings”

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• The tax upon land values is the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive.It is the taking by the community for the use of the community of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by nature be attained.

  Henry George

  Fall, Taken, Land

  Henry George (2006). “Progress and Poverty”, p.299, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The American people want a balanced budget. They want Congress to stop this barbaric practice of perpetual deficit spending. It really, if you think about it, is a form of taxation without representation. We fought a war over that issue and we won that war.

  Mike Lee

  War, Thinking, Practice

  "Tea Party Senator Mike Lee: We Need to Change the Way We Spend Money in Washington". "On the Record" with Greta Van Susteren, www.foxnews.com. April 12, 2011.

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