Taxes Quotes

“There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

“Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.”
― Ron Paul

“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.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“...but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
― Benjamin Franklin, The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, LL.D ...: Comprising a Series of Letters on Miscellaneous, Literary, and Political Subjects ...

“Nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
― Jennifer Lynn Barnes, The Inheritance Games

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
― Frédéric Bastiat

“I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

“Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are -- a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.”
― Ha-Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship.”
― Alexander Fraser Tytler Woodhouselee

“Taxation is theft, purely and simply even though it is theft on a grand and colossal scale which no acknowledged criminals could hope to match. It is a compulsory seizure of the property of the State’s inhabitants, or subjects.”
― Murray N. Rothbard

“Government! Three fourths parasitic and the other fourth Stupid fumbling.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity.”
― Rush Limbaugh

“He said that there was death and taxes, and taxes was worse, because at least death didn’t happen to you every year.”
― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

“You can’t tax business. Business doesn’t pay taxes. It collects taxes.”
― Ronald Reagan

“The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.”
― Judith Martin

“Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.”
― Herman Wouk

“They're so broke that they've actually cut essential services. In many places, they've cut policemen, because, who the fuck needs them? Or firemen, son of a bitch, it's much more fun watching something burn down.”
― Lewis Black

“The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
”
― Paula Poundstone

“The power to tax is the power to destroy.”
― John Marshall

“Every culture has some ritual for joining two people together and making them stay that way, and ours is giving tax breaks.”
― Bauvard, Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic

“In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical.”
― Naomi Klein

“He's spending a year dead for tax reasons.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me”
― Oliver Wendell. Holmes

“You don't pay taxes-they take taxes.”
― Chris Rock

“wouldn't you like to make sure all those millions you give to Uncle Sam went to schools and hospitals instead of nuclear warheads?'

As a matter of fact, he would. Playgrounds for big kids, preschool programs to little ones, and mandatory LASIK surgery for NFL refs.”
― Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Natural Born Charmer

“These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.

Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.

And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.”
― Paul Krugman

“Is this Paradise?'
'I can guarantee you that it isn't,' Jubal assured him. 'My taxes are due this week.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“All things built with tax money are beautiful: so we must think or go mad.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, In the Night Garden