#government

By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.. ↗

— Joseph Sobran

#government #independence #tax #taxes #zog

The source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think....Let us dare to read, think, speak, write. ↗

— David McCullough

#government #john-adams #liberty #mccullough #politics-freedom-liberty

Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool? ↗

— William Hazlitt

#freedom #government-tool #porup-satire #truth #united-states-of-air

Our Press and our schools cultivate Chauvinism, militarism, dogmatism, conformism and ignorance. The arbitrary power of the Government is unlimited, and unexampled in history; freedom of the Press, of opinion and of movement are as thoroughly exterminated as though the proclamation of the Rights of Man had never been. We have built up the most gigantic police apparatus, with informers made a national institution, and the most refined scientific system of political and mental torture. We whip the groaning masses of the country towards a theoretical future happiness, which only we can. ↗

— Arthur Koestler

#government #freedom

The peoples owe all political rights and privileges which we enjoy today in greater or lesser measure, not to the good will of their governments, but to their own strength. One need only study the history of the past three hundred years to understand by what relentless struggles every right has had to be wrested inch by inch from the despots. ↗

— Rudolf Rocker

#freedom #government #privileges #rights #struggle

A real patriot doesn’t unconditionally stick up for his government—he stands up for freedom.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#government #patriot #patriotic #freedom

Rules, laws and codes become obsolete among the self-governed. ↗

— T.F. Hodge

#laws #quotes-to-live-by #rules #self-government #death

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending. ↗

— Thomas Sowell

#balanced #budgets #cover #ever #goal

I want the US government to dispense with all the “red tape,” and start using Caution tape. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#caution-tape #funny #government #red-tape #us-government

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them. ↗

— Glenn Reynolds

#subsidies #home