The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations A classic since 1953 with over 20,000 quotes from over 3,000 authors.
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Last Words of Saints and Sinners 700 Final Quotes from the Famous, the Infamous, and the Inspiring Figures of History
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The Law This 1850 classic is an absolute must read for anyone interested in law, justice, truth, or liberty. A most compelling and revolutionary look at The Law.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature (17th Edition)
The Stupidest Things Ever Said by Politicians Rise up, America -- and laugh out loud at the greatest gaffes that no spin doctor could possibly fix!
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The Most Brilliant Thoughts of All Time You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less.
2,715 One-Line Quotations for Speakers, Writers & Raconteurs Invaluable sampler of witticisms, epigrams, sayings, bon mots, platitudes and insights chosen for their brevity and pithiness.
Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts Funny Sayings A stupendous collection of quotes, quips, epigrams, witticisms, and humorous comments for personal enjoyment and ready reference.
Quick Quips and Quotes; 532 Things I Wish I Had Said Quick Quips and Quotes is the Ultimate Collection of one liners.
Bartlett's Book of Anecdotes The ultimate anthology of anecdotes, now revised with over 700 new entries.
Quotations for Public Speakers A Historical, Literary, and Political Anthology
Liberty - The American Revolution This compelling series traces the events leading up to the war and America's fight for freedom.
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Libertarianism: A Primer David Boaz, director of the Cato Institute, has written a simple introduction to Libertarianism inteneded to appeal to disgruntled Democrats and Republicans everywhere.
The Libertarian Reader Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman
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| Ken Adelman | Clinton realized that America could not economically afford the Protocol Gore negotiated. The Clinton-Gore's Energy Department found Kyoto would lead to $400 billion a year in lost output. ... Gore tries to throw Enron on the back of the current administration. But it was Enron Board Chairman Kenneth Lay who sold Clinton-Gore on Kyoto's cap and trade system. Gore, Clinton, and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin met with Lay on Aug. 7, 1997 to go over goals and procedures for the Kyoto session. ... The corporate smoking memo here was not that from an ExxonMobil adviser to oppose Dr. Watson, but the Enron internal memo saying Kyoto 'would do more to promote Enron's business than almost any other regulatory initiative'. | |
| Donald Alexander | We now have so many regulations that everyone is guilty of some violation. | |
| Woody Allen | We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice. | |
| Tom Anderson | The Original Sin which brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and dictatorship was the Federal Income Tax Amendment and its illegitimate child, Federal Aid. | |
| Harry J. Anslinger | There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing, result from marijuana usage. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others. | |
| Dwight E. Avis | Let me point this out now. Your income tax is 100 percent voluntary tax, and your liquor tax is 100 percent enforced tax. Now, the situation is as different as night and day. Consequently, your same rules just will not apply... | |
| Doug Bandow | [E]conomic liberty and creative entrepreneurship are the basis of any solution to today’s social and economic difficulties. Blaming business, setting wages, and attempting to run the economy by decree from Washington only exacerbates the problems. Consider the minimum wage. It seems so simple: Tell business to pay its workers more. But a hike in the minimum wage is essentially a tax, punishing precisely those companies that hire workers with the least skills. | |
| Dave Barry | As a taxpayer, you are required to be fully in compliance with the United States Tax Code, which is currently the size and weight of the Budweiser Clydesdales. | |
| Gerald Barzan | Taxation with representation ain't so hot either. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. | |
| Frederic Bastiat | No legal plunder: This is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic.
Until the day of my death, I shall proclaim this principle
with all the force of my lungs (which alas! is all too inadequate). | |
| William Beach | Those who support the death tax generally do so not for economic reasons but for political ones. They want to make the tax code 'fair' by taxing away the lifetime wealth of others. | |
| Bernard Berenson | Governments last as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed. | |
| Isaiah Berlin | All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate. | |
| Georges Bernanos | Justice in the hands of the powerful is merely a governing system like any other. Why call it justice? Let us rather call it injustice, but of a sly effective order, based entirely on cruel knowledge of the resistance of the weak, their capacity for pain, humiliation and misery. | |
| Tom Bethel | No Gulag, evidently, can deter the advocates of state power from believing in their own virtue and in the morality of the power they exercise. We are all Hobbesians now. Virtue is presumed to reside in the state. Its reliance on compulsion is seen as fulfilling, not undermining, morality. Our communicators, oddly employed in the private sector, work tirelessly to ensure that state control is maintained, our taxes stay high, the official message is promoted. The people know, and can only know, a tiny fraction of what Leviathan does, and what they know is what these partisans tell them. | |
| Dr. Walter Block | Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity. | |
| William Boetcker | You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.\\
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.\\
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.\\
You cannot lift the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.\\
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.\\
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.\\
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.\\
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.\\
You cannot build character and courage by taking away men's initiative and independence.\\
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. | |
| Napoleon Bonaparte | Not one cent should be raised unless it is in accord with the law. | |
| Bertolt Brecht | Those who take the most from the table, teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined, demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill, speak to the hungry, of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss, call ruling difficult, for ordinary folk. | |
| David Brinkley | The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were. | |
| Art Buchwald | Tax reform is taking the taxes off things that have been taxed in the past and putting taxes on things that haven't been taxed before. | |
| Christopher Bullock | 'Tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes. | |
| George Burns | Too bad all the people who know how to run this country are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair. | |
| William S. Burroughs | Once the law starts asking questions, there's no stopping them. | |
| Salmon P. Chase | If Congress sees fit to impose a capitation, or other direct tax, it must be laid in proportion to the census; if Congress determines to impose duties, imposts, and excises, they must be uniform throughout the United States. These are not strictly limitations of power. They are rules prescribing the mode in which it shall be exercised. ... This review shows that personal property, contracts, occupations, and the like have never been regarded by Congress as proper subjects of direct tax. | |
| Joseph H. Choate | The Act of Congress which we are impugning before you is communistic in its purposes and tendencies, and is defended here upon principles as communistic, socialistic - what shall I call them - populistic as ever have been
addressed to any political assembly in the world. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. | |
| Sir Winston Churchill | So they [the Government] go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. | |
| Hillary Clinton | We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. | |
| Marvin Cooley | I will no longer pay for the destruction of my country, family, and self. Damn tyranny! Damn the Federal Reserve liars and thieves! Damn all pettifogging, oath-breaking US attorneys and judges.… I will see you all in Hell and shed my blood before I will be robbed of one more dollar to finance a national policy of treason, plunder, and corruption | |
| Calvin Coolidge | The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | As I went about with my father, when he collected taxes, I knew that when taxes were laid someone had to work hard to earn the money to pay them. | |
| Calvin Coolidge | Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery. | |
| Davy Crockett | There ain't no ticks like poly-ticks. Bloodsuckers all. | |
| Bertrand de Jouvenel | The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. | |
| Declaration of Independence | But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. | |
| Benjamin Disraeli | To tax the community for the advantage of a class is not protection, it is plunder. | |
| Frederick Douglass | I know no class of my fellowmen, however just, enlightened, and humane, which can be wisely and safely trusted absolutely with the liberties of any other class. | |
| F. R. Duplantier | A liberal's like to be lax\\When recommending a tax.\\With a glut in his heart\\And his brain low a quart,\\He will give you\\the shirts off our backs. | |
| Will Durant | Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes. | |
| Justice Stephen J. Field | Here I close my opinion. I could not say less in view of
questions of such gravity that go down to the very foundations of the government. If the
provisions of the Constitution can be set aside by an Act of Congress, where is the course
of usurpation to end? The present assault upon capital is but the beginning. It will be but
the stepping-stone to others, larger and more sweeping, till our political contests will
become a war of the poor against the rich; a war growing in intensity and bitterness. | |
| Steve Forbes | The Declaration of Independence, the words that launched our nation -- 1,300 words. The Bible, the word of God -- 773,000 words. The Tax Code, the words of politicians -- 7,000,000 words -- and growing! | |
| Benjamin Franklin | The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters, had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created great unemployment and dissatisfaction. Within a year, the poor houses were filled. The hungry and homeless walked the streets everywhere. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the International Bankers was probably the Prime reason for the Revolutionary War. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part. | |
| Benjamin Franklin | Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world
nothing is certain but death and taxes. | |
| Geoffrey Brennan and James M. Buchanan | Tax limits, or fiscal constraints generally, can be expected to curb government's appetites to the extent that the utility function of governmental decision makers contains arguments for privately enjoyable 'creature comforts,' for final end items of consumption. Such constraints become much less effective, and may well be evaded, if the motive force behind governmental action is 'do-goodism.' The licentious sinners we can control; the saintly ascetics may destroy us. | |
| Arthur Godfrey | I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. | |
| Paul Greenberg | For the average American family, filling out a tax form has become like attacking a puzzle to which, often enough, there is no right answer. But we're all supposed to swear, on penalty of perjury, that we've done our best to find it. | |
| Alan Greenspan | Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world. | |
| Alan Greenspan | In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. ... This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard. | |
| G. Edward Griffin | No one in America fully understands the constantly changing Internal Revenue Code.
Agents of the IRS do not, judges do not, congressmen do not, and most assuredly taxpayers do not. | |
| Alexander Hamilton | But if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights | |
| Sara Hammond | Americans will spend more this year per capita on taxes than on food ($2,693), clothing ($1,404) and shelter ($5,833) combined. The single highest spending item is federal taxes, at $7,026 ... Arizonans’ per-capita bite is $9,041, a combination of federal and state taxes. | |
| Judge Learned Hand | 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. | |
| Friedrich August von Hayek | The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not. | |
| Ammon Hennacy | Oh, judge, your damn laws: the good people don't need them and the bad people don't follow them so what good are they? | |
| Ammon Hennacy | An anarchist is anyone who doesn't need a cop to tell him what to do. | |
| Ammon Hennacy | Force is the weapon of the weak. | |
| Patrick Henry | I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past. | |
| Auberon Herbert | ... every tax or rate, forcibly taken from an unwilling person, is immoral and oppressive. | |
| Jacob G. Hornberger | Another major reason why crime is increasing is that crime pays, and in our tax-ridden, regulation crushed economy, many people cannot economically survive through low-end jobs. ... 'The income that offenders can earn in the world of crime, as compared with the world of work, all too often makes crime appear to be the better choice.' In Washington, D.C., it costs $7,000 in city fees to open a pushcart. In California, up to eighty federal and state licenses are required to open a small business. In New York, a medallion to operate a taxicab costs $150,000. More than 700 occupations in the United States require a government license. Throughout the country, church soup kitchens are being closed by departments of health. No wonder so many people turn to crime and violence to survive. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I am not among those who fear the people.\\
They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.\\\\
And to preserve their independence, \\
We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.\\
We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude.\\\\
If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.\\\\
Our land-holders, too, like theirs, retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs but held really in trust for the treasury, must wander, like theirs, in foreign countries, and be contented with penury, obscurity, exile, and the glory of the nation.\\\\
This example reads to us the salutary lesson, that private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagances.\\\\
And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for the second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.\\\\
Then begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia, which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man.\\\\
And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt.\\
Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | I... [proposed] three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes.
1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor.
2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the
common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were
in easy circumstances.
And 3d. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in
their highest degree...
The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the
inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general
tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical. | |
| Thomas Jefferson | We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debt, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our calling and our creeds...[we will] have no time to think, no means of calling our miss-managers to account but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers... And this is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for[ another]... till the bulk of society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery... And the fore-horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression. | |
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