I was looking for a particular quote (Winston Churchill’s just below) and found it. I also found a lot of other quotes that I had to do my little part to help preserve for posterity about the evils of everything the modern Democrat Party stands for and the destruction it has already done and surely will continue to do the the United States of America:
On speaking about communism: “We pretend to work; they pretend to pay us.” — Vladimir Voinovich
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 Churchill (1903)
The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money. — Margaret Thatcher
Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves. — Benjamin Constant, Brazilian statesman
There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do. — Milton Friedman, Nobel laureate
Every time government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves. — Benjamin Constant, Brazilian statesman
A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away. — Barry Goldwater
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
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of many by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away mans initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves. — William J. H. Boetcker.
Government cannot make man richer, but it can make him poorer. — Ludwig von Mises
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P. J. O’Rourke
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it, A politician who portrays himself as “caring” and “sensitive” because he wants to expand the Government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money. Well, who isn’t? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he’ll do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head. — P. J. O’Rourke
The Tenth Commandment [thou shalt not covet] sends a message to collectivists, to people who believe wealth is best obtained by redistribution. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell. — P. J. O’Rourke
Government’s view of the economy should be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan (1986)
Give me control over a man’s economic actions, and hence over his means of survival, and except for a few occasional heroes, I’ll promise to deliver to you men who think and write and behave as I want them to. — Benjamine A. Rooge
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend of the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw
If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else’s expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves. — Thomas Sowell (1992)
The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. — Norman Thomas – Socialist Party Presidential candidate (1948)
No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain (1866)
In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of citizens to give to the other. — Voltaire (1764)
No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. — Alexander Tytler
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, CONFUSES the distinction BETWEEN Government AND Society. As a result…EVERY time We object to a thing being done by Government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. — Frederic Bastiat
Here are a few others that expose the corrupt heart of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party:
“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”–Thomas Jefferson
“That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world” — John Adams
Is it not High Time for the People of this Country explicitly to declare, whether they will be Freemen or Slaves? It is an important Question which ought to be decided. It concerns us more than any Thing in this Life. The Salvation of our Souls is interested in the Event: For wherever Tyranny is establish’d, Immorality of every Kind comes in like a Torrent. It is in the Interest of Tyrants to reduce the People to Ignorance and Vice. For they cannot live in any Country where Virtue and Knowledge prevail. The Religion and public Liberty of a People are intimately connected; their Interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this Reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin’d to destroy the People’s Liberties, practice every Art to poison their Morals. How greatly then does it concern us, at all Events, to put a Stop to the Progress of Tyranny. It is advanced already by far too many Strides. We are at this moment upon a precipice. The next step may be fatal to us. Let us then act like wise Men; calmly took around us and consider what is best to be done. Let us converse together upon this most interesting Subject and open our minds freely to each other. Let it be the topic of conversation in every social Club. Let every Town assemble. Let Associations & Combinations be everywhere set up to consult and recover our just Rights. — Samuel Adams, 1772
“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.” — Samuel Adams
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. — Benjamin Franklin
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty. — Thomas Jefferson
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” –Patrick Henry
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.” — Thomas Paine
“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.” — Thomas Jefferson
“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” — Thomas Jefferson
“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” –Thomas Jefferson
“The Tenth Amendment [i.e., “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”] is the foundation of the Constitution.” — Thomas Jefferson
“He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.” — Benjamin Franklin, from his writings, 1758
“I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.” — Benjamin Franklin, On the Price of Corn and Management of the Poor, November 1766
“Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. St. Monday and St. Tuesday, will soon cease to be holidays. Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase, and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them.” — Benjamin Franklin, letter to Collinson, May 9, 1753
“To contract new debts is not the way to pay for old ones.”– George Washinton, to James Welch, April 7, 1799
“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible.” George Washington, Farewell Address, September 17, 1796
“I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse.” — James Madison, to Henry Lee, April 13, 1790
“With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” — James Madison
“If Congress can employ money indefinitely to the general welfare… they may appoint teachers in every state… The powers of Congress would subvert the very foundation, the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America.” — James Madison
“Then I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1789
“Loading up the nation with debt and leaving it for the following generations to pay is morally irresponsible. Excessive debt is a means by which governments oppress the people and waste their substance. No nation has a right to contract debt for periods longer than the majority contracting it can expect to live.” — Thomas Jefferson
“It is a miserable arithmetic which makes any single privation whatever so painful as a total privation of everything which must necessarily follow the living so far beyond our income.” –Thomas Jefferson to William Hay, 1787
“The same prudence, which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public monies.”–Thomas Jefferson, to Shelton Giliam, June 19, 1808
“Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States.” –Noah Webster
“A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins.” — Benjamin Franklin
“I am for a government rigorously frugal and simple, applying all the possible savings of the public revenue to the discharge of the national debt, and not for a multiplication of officers and salaries merely to make partisans, and for increasing, by every device, the public debt on the principle of its being a public blessing.” — Thomas Jefferson
“If the debt which the banking companies owe be a blessing to anybody, it is to themselves alone, who are realizing a solid interest of eight or ten per cent on it. As to the public, these companies have banished all our gold and silver medium, which, before their institution, we had without interest, which never could have perished in our hands, and would have been our salvation now in the hour of war; instead of which they have given us two hundred million of froth and bubble, on which we are to pay them heavy interest, until it shall vanish into air… We are warranted, then, in affirming that this parody on the principle of ‘a public debt being a public blessing,’ and its mutation into the blessing of private instead of public debts, is as ridiculous as the original principle itself. In both cases, the truth is, that capital may be produced by industry, and accumulated by economy; but jugglers only will propose to create it by legerdemain tricks with paper.” –Thomas Jefferson to John W. Eppes, 1813.
“I sincerely believe… that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816.
“To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt.” — Thomas Jefferson
“If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.” — Thomas Jefferson, to Thomas Cooper, January 29, 1802
“We are endeavoring, too, to reduce the government to the practice of a rigorous economy, to avoid burdening the people, and arming the magistrate with a patronage of money, which might be used to corrupt and undermine the principles of our government.”–Thomas Jefferson, letter to Mr. Pictet, February 5, 1803
“My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.” –Thomas Jefferson
“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.” –Thomas Jefferson
“Still one thing more, fellow citizens — 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, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”– Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
“Experience has proved to us that a dollar of silver disappears for every dollar of paper emitted.” –Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1791.
“The maxim of buying nothing without the money in our pockets to pay for it would make of our country one of the happiest on earth.” –Thomas Jefferson to Alexander Donald, 1787.
And in light of our Washington leaders stated goal of re-inflating the housing bubble: “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”–Thomas Jefferson
Mind you, all of these men’s views can be summarily dismissed if you consider the following man a “great thinker”:
“I think that we can say that the Constitution reflected the enormous blind spot in this culture that carries on until this day and that the framers had that same blind spot. I don’t think the two views are contradictory to say that it was a remarkable political document that paved the way for where we are now and to say that it also reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day.” — Barack Hussein Obama
A few great non-founding father quotes regarding the socialism of the modern Democrat Party:
“The collectivist mindset, as embodied by the necessity to be organized through a centralized, bureaucratically-dominated, legislatively-driven authority, where accountability for individual welfare is subservient to the required acquiescence demanded by the tenets of Marxism, is contrary and in diametrical opposition to America’s core mandate for personal freedom and the naturally inherent psychological need to have ownership in life’s outcomes. The road to dictatorship can start with the most noble of beginnings and can be, ironically, augmented by the very people it ends up controlling. For it is so that an orientation of dependence becomes an addiction to need.” — O.D. Harrisson
“There are many who are losing faith in God and Government. For some, God may be a question, but for all of us Government is a fact.
Our government was intended by our Forefathers to be a tool of the people, used to facillitate our freedom and provide for our common good. Government was to exist to administer our will, not to become our administrator.Because this is the people’s government, not a political party’s government or any one individual’s government, we do not look to it to solve all societal ills or install perfection among us. That is the way our founders designed it, that is the way it has worked for well over two centuries and that is the way we want it.
When taxed inappropriately we lose our economy, when regulated beyond need we lose our freedom, when treated like children we lose our self respect and when lied to we lose our rights. So when government goes wrong, it is we who are wronged, but also it is we who are wrong for letting it happen” — O.D. Harrisson
“What were the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats.” — Rep. Jeb Hensarling
“Rarely in history has a nation so passively accepted such a radical change in the military balance. If we are to remedy it, we must first recognize the fact that we have placed ourselves at a significant disadvantage voluntarily. This is not the result of SALT. It is the consequence of unilateral decisions extending over a decade and a half. By a strategic doctrine adopted in the ’60s, by the bitter domestic divisions growing out of the war in Vietnam, and by choices by the present administration.
All these actions were unilateral-hence avoidable. They were not extracted from us by clever Soviet negotiators. We imposed them on ourselves by our choices, theories and domestic turmoil. It is therefore in our power to alter them.” — Henry Kissinger
“You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.” – Thomas Sowell
“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.” — Adam Smith, “Wealth of Nations,” Book II, Chapter II
“The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.” – Albert Einstein
“Some ideas are so foolish that only an intellectual could believe them, for no ordinary man could be such a fool.” — George Orwell
“Life’s tough. It’s even tougher if you’re stupid.” — John Wayne
And one that is particularly important to read and understand today:
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morgenthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 9, 1939
An eerie prediction of false messiahs and the stupidity of “intellectuals” who believe them:
A journalist named Stephen Laurant had been jailed circa 1935 for questioning Nazism:
“I am writing this from cell 24. Outside a new Germany is being created. Many millions are rejoicing. Hitler is promising everyone precisely what they want. I think when they wake to their sobering senses, they will find they have been led by the nose and duped by lies.”Jewish doctor Herta Knotwolf: “So many worship him [Hitler] as their savior, their redeemer from unbearable poverty. Many are filled with some worry, but all are united in the words, ‘Now things will change.'”
While it is unlikely that posterity will ever regard me as a great thinker in comparison to the numerous great thinkers I cited above (with the one singular exception of Barack Obama above), I hope you don’t mind me quoting myself:
“If you tax people who work and give it to people who don’t work, you will end up with fewer and fewer people who work.”
:)