Favorite Quotes
Here are some of my
favorite quotes and passages.
"To lay with one hand the power of the
government on the property
of the citizen, and with the other to
bestow it upon favored individuals
to aid private enterprises and build up
private fortunes is none the less
a robbery because it is done under the forms
of law and is called taxation."
Supreme Court Justice Samuel F.
Miller writing for the majority in Loan
Association v. Topeka, 1874
Debts
"
If we run into such debts 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 callings and our creeds, as the people of England are,
our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four,
and 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 do now, on oatmeal
and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to
account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet
their chains around 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 a second, that second for a third, and so on 'til the bulk of
the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no
sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering . . .
"And the forehorse of this
frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train
wretchedness and oppression."
-- Thomas Jefferson
|
