Contract All | Expand All
Anonymous
“Socialism: Theft justified by lies, enforced by murder.”
Rev. William John Henry Boetcker
The Ten Cannots
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.
Neal Boortz
“The rich get richer because they keep doing whatever they did to make them rich. Ditto for the poor.”
"Please, please, PLEASE tell me that there really aren’t people out there who think that they are going to retire on their Social Security! Do we really have people that stupid walking around loose with voter registration cards in their pockets?"
"There is nothing quite so depressing as waking up to face a day when you know that you are going to have to deal with a government
office or bureaucracy."
"It’s about damned time that someone start calling the Democrats what they are...
economic fascists. Do your homework on that definition and you’ll understand."
"The principal villain in rising health care costs is the government. Not pharmaceutical companies, not
doctors, but government."
"The socialist agenda of the Democratic Party is not supported by the Constitution."
"When the taxes were cut dramatically in 1983, contributions to private charity soared."
"There is no better anti-poverty program anywhere than capitalism."
William F. Buckley
"Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security."
Winston Churchill
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."
Milton Friedman
“History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.”
"What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system."
"A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom."
"The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books."
"If the government is to try and ban private consumption of alcohol and tobacco, it must surely ban such activities as hang-gliding, skiing, rock-climbing and so on. Where should it stop? Rugby? American Football? Ice Hockey?
Insofar as the government has information not generally available about the merits or demerits of the items we ingest or the activities we engage in, let it give us the information. But let it leave us free to choose what chances we want to take with our own lives."
"The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy."
"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
Henry Ford
“Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it."
Goethe
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
Barry Goldwater
”I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Robert Heinlein
”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.”
Herbert Hoover
”Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
Jacob Hornberger
”If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.”
Paul Jacob
“The free market offers Wal-Mart haters an easy way to hit Wal-Mart right where it hurts. These wizards should start their own companies and pay entry-level retail workers as much as they think is "enough," and of course offer a generous package of health care and other benefits to both full and part-time employees. Problem solved!”
Thomas Jefferson
"The only greater [evil] than separation... [is] living under a government of discretion."
"The greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers."
"When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated."
"A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
"I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that 'all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.' To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power not longer susceptible of any definition."
"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."
James Madison
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions."
" The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government."
P.J. O'Rourke
“If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until it's free."
”There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
Camille Paglia
“It is hypocritical for feminists and intellectuals to enjoy the pleasures and conveniences of capitalism while sneering at it.... Everyone born into capitalism has incurred a debt to it.”
Justice Casey Percell
”It is not the responsibility of the government or the legal system to protect a citizen from himself.”
Pericles
”Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.”
Ayn Rand
"America's abundance was created not by public sacrifices to 'the common good,' but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America's industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance -- and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way."
"...observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists—amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for 'harmony with nature'—there is no discussion of man's needs and the requirements of his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision—i.e., on the level of sea urchins or polar bears..."
Ronald Reagan
"How do you tell a Communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
Will Rogers
“The more ignorant you are, the quicker you fight.”
Adam Smith
“Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.”
"Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only."
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it."
"In the midst of all the exactions of government, capital has been silently and gradually accumulated by the private frugality and good conduct of individuals, by their universal, continual, and uninterrupted effort to better their own condition. It is this effort, protected by law and allowed by liberty to exert itself in the manner that is most advantageous, which has maintained the progress of England towards opulence and improvement in almost all former times...
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense... They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will."
"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a many who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it."
"According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to ... first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, so far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice, and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain..."
Joseph Sobran
"Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money --- only for wanting to keep your own money."
Thomas Sowell
“Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as they are with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong.”
"The most fundamental fact about the ideas of the political left is that they do not work. Therefore we should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive."
”Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.”
"Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area - crime, education, housing, race relations - the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them."
"It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic."
"It is hard to think of any word that has confused more issues than the word "rights." Nowadays, almost anything that anybody wants is called a "right" -- a magic word that does away with the need for evidence, logic or even common sense."
Fraser Tyler
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship. [The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been two hundred years]These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back into bondage."
Voltaire
“In general the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to the other."
Fredrich von Hayek
"I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the judicial safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice."
"There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal."
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything."
"The pursuit of gain is the only way in which people can serve the needs of others whom they do not know."
Ludwig von Mises
"What is euphemistically called collective bargaining by union leaders and pro-labor legislation is bargaining at the point of a gun. It is bargaining between an armed party, ready to use its weapons, and an unarmed party under duress. It is not a market transaction."
“State interference in economic life, which calls itself economic policy, has done nothing but destroy economic life.”
"If one rejects laissez faire on account of mans fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action."
"Socialism: is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings."
"Liberalism and capitalism address themselves to the cool, well-balanced mind. They proceed by strict logic, eliminating any appeal to the emotions. Socialism, on the contrary, works on the emotions, tries to violate logical considerations by rousing a sense of personal interest and to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts."
"Men must choose between the market economy and socialism. They cannot evade deciding between these alternatives by adopting a middle-of-the-road position, whatever name they may give to it."
"Socialism and democracy are irreconcilable."
Walter E. Williams
"Communism and socialism is seductive. It promises us that people will contribute according to ability and receive according to needs. Everybody is equal. Everybody has a right to decent housing, decent food and affordable medical care. History should have taught us that when we hear people talk this stuff -- watch out!"
"Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?"
"The War between the States... produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day. Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the Constitution. ... [The War] also laid to rest the great principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence that 'Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed'."
"The founders of our nation would be horrified by today's level of American servitude to their government."
