Politics Quotes

New Zealand has the cheapest government money can buy.

~ Grant Mclachlan

On December 9, 1994, Yeltsin issued a statement ordering the Federal army to execute the disarmament of all illegal armed units in Chechnya, or as they were known locally, the government.

~ Anthony Marra

Lest we lay too heavy a criticism against any government administration--local, state, or federal--we are reminded that American government is representational. Political leaders reflect the people who elect them (as well as those who fail in this civic responsibility) as a mirror reflects those who gaze into it.

~ Ron Brackin

Corporations barely pay taxes. The corporate tax rate is already very low, but corporations have worked out an array of complicated techniques so they often don't have to pay taxes at all... The scale of sheer robbery by corporate power is enormous.

~ Noam Chomsky

Tyrants are obvious, and easy to identify. It is the well entrenched and corrupt establishment that is truly insidious.

~ A.e. Samaan

Censorship exists to protect corruption.

~ Suzy Kassem

Yea” might be turned into “Nay” and vice versa if a sufficient quantity of wordage was applied to the matter. The second was that in any argument, the victor is always right, and the third that though the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword speaks louder and stronger at any given moment.- Roger Fenwick, Duke of Grand Fenwick

~ Leonard Wibberley

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

~ H.l. Mencken

We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.

~ Trey Parker

The only thing I'm afraid of about this country is that its government will someday become so monstrous that the smallest person in it will be trampled underfoot, and then it wouldn't be worth living in

~ Harper Lee

The fact that corporations constitute what amounts to the governing class today evidences the fact that we are no longer a representative republic; that we are a most ruled people, under the ceaseless control of a government that is for and by the corporations, can no longer be denied. The implications are immense: a transformation of not only our economic but our political organization is necessary.

~ Matthew P. Holbert

Every step which leads from capitalism toward planning is necessarily a step nearer to absolutism and dictatorship.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

Copyright: a system of monopoly privilege over the expression of ideas that enables government to stop consumer-friendly economic development and reward uncompetitive and legally privileged elites to fleece the public through surreptitious use of coercion.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

It’s all about truth,” he said. “We don’t trust governments because they don’t tell us the truth. They make every story sound like it’s good news, even when it’s not. Those who are in power sing their own praises. Those who aren’t in power criticise those that are. And no-one tells the whole truth. That’s why we look for conspiracies. We know we are being lied to. We just don’t know what they are lying to us about.

~ Will Once

To make a contented slave, you must make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken his moral and mental vision, and, as far as possible, to annihilate his power of reason. He must be able to detect no inconsistencies in slavery. The man that takes his earnings, must be able to convince him that he has a perfect right to do so. It must not depend upon mere force; the slave must know no Higher Law than his master's will. The whole relationship must not only demonstrate, to his mind, its necessity, but its absolute rightfulness.

~ Frederick Douglass

Just as war is the natural consequence of monopoly, peace is the natural consequence of liberty.

~ Gustave De Molinari

Once you understand the economics of the Austrian School and the philosophy of liberty in the tradition of Rothbard, you never look at anything – not the state, the media, the central bank, the political class, nothing – the same way again.

~ Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

~ Henry Grady Weaver

The big question about the American depression is not whether war with Germany and Japan ended it. It is why the Depression lasted until that war. From 1929 to 1940, from Hoover to Roosevelt, government intervention helped to make the Depression Great.

~ Amity Shlaes

Justice requires that you should not place the burdens of one man on the shoulders of another man, even though he is better able to bear them. In plainer words, that you should not make one set of men pay for what is used by another set of men.

~ Auberon Herbert

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

It is curious to note that when for reasons of conscience, people refuse to kill, they are often exempted from active military duty. But there are no exemptions for people who, for reasons of conscience, refuse to financially support the bureaucracy that actually does the killing. Apparently, the state takes money more seriously than life.

~ Karl Hess

It's amazing the amount of anger, hostility and hatred some people show towards those of us who want to leave them in freedom. Hysterically, some statists characterize that as the voluntaryists trying to force their views on everyone else. You're oppressing me, by leaving me alone, and wanting me to leave you alone! Meanwhile, they wildly cheer when some politician promises to extort and control them. Go figure.

~ Larken Rose

If political authority is not limited, the division of powers, ordinarily the guarantee of freedom, becomes a danger and a scourge.

~ Benjamin Constant

What is freedom to a nation, but freedom to the individuals in it?

~ Harriett Beecher-Stowe

The actions of government, we are told, bear down only on imprudent souls who provoke them. The man who resigns himself and keeps silent is always safe. Reassured by this worthless and specious argument, we do not protest against the oppressors. Instead we find fault with the victims. Nobody knows how to be brave even prudentially. Everyone stays silent, keeping his head low in the self-deceiving hope of disarming the powers that be by his silence. People give despotism free access, flattering themselves they will be treated with consideration. Eyes to the ground, each person walks in silence the narrow path leading him safely to the tomb.

~ Benjamin Constant

Every socialist is a disguised dictator.

~ Ludwig Von Mises

Voting, the be all and end all of modern democratic politicians, has become a farce, if indeed it was ever anything else. By voting, the people decide only which of the oligarchs preselected for them as viable candidates will wield the whip used to flog them and will command the legion of willing accomplices and anointed lickspittles who perpetrate the countless violations of the people’s natural rights. Meanwhile, the masters soothe the masses by assuring them night and day that they — the plundered and bullied multitudes who compose the electorate — are themselves the government.

~ Robert Higgs

The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently.

~ Peter Heather

Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of state if committed by the government. We believe that theft is theft and does not become legitimated because organized robbers call their theft taxation. We believe that enslavement is enslavement even if the institution committing that act calls it conscription. In short, the key to libertarian theory is that it makes no exceptions in its universal ethic for government.

~ Murray N. Rothbard

Emergencies” have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

~ Friedrich A. Hayek

Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an action, by causing us to feel them; and we cannot fail to finish by knowing that fire burns, if we have burned ourselves. For this rough teacher, I should like, if possible, to substitute a more gentle one. I mean Foresight. For this purpose I shall examine the consequences of certain economical phenomena, by placing in opposition to each other those which are seen, and those which are not seen.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

Without anarchy, there would be chaos.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

The instant that any government obtains a monetary printing press, it becomes a deeply dishonest government, empowered to rob people by stealth. A government with the power to print money knows no limits.

~ Jeffrey Tucker

There is in all of us a strong disposition to regard what is lawful as legitimate, so much so that many falsely derive all justice from law. It is sufficient, then, for the law to order and sanction plunder, that it may appear to many consciences just and sacred. Slavery, protection, and monopoly find defenders, not only in those who profit by them, but in those who suffer by them. If you suggest a doubt as to the morality of these institutions, it is said directly—“You are a dangerous experimenter, a utopian, a theorist, a despiser of the laws; you would shake the basis upon which society rests.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

Governments from the top fail as often as those from the bottom; and every great failure brings a sad social reaction, thousands and millions of helpless men laying down their lives in the unhappy process. Why may not statesmen study the past and avoid such catastrophes?Delivered in his capacity as the American Ambassador to Germany, on October 12, 1933, in a speech to the Berlin branch of the American Chamber of Commerce, quoted in Erik Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts.

~ William E. Dodd

People are more willing to support the exercise of authority over themselves when they believe it to be an objective, neutral feature of the natural world. This was the idea behind the concept of the divine right of kings. By making the king appear to be an integral part of God's plan for the world rather than an ordinary human being dominating his fellows by brute force, the public could be more easily persuaded to bow to his authority. However, when the doctrine of divine right became discredited, a replacement was needed to ensure that the public did not view political authority as merely the exercise of naked power. That replacement is the concept of the rule of law.

~ John Hasnas

I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring.

~ Albert Jay Nock

The most dangerous diminutions of freedom come from those who are convinced of their moral rectitude.

~ Daniel Hannan