Classic Quotes on Politics

[steepo17]

Some entertaining quotes that I found.....

• In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress.- John Adams
• If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. - Mark Twain
• Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. - Mark Twain
• I 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
• A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. - George Bernard Shaw
• A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. - G. Gordon Liddy
• Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. - James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994)
• Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. - Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University
• Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. - P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
• Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. - Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)
• Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. - Ronald Reagan (1986)
• I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. - Will Rogers
• If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free! - P.J. O'Rourke
• In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. - Voltaire (1764)
• Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you! - Pericles (430 B.C.)
• No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. - Mark Twain (1866)
• Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it. - Anonymous
• The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. - Ronald Reagan
• The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. - Winston Churchill
• The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. - Mark Twain
• The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. - Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)
• There is no distinctly native American criminal class...save Congress.- Mark Twain
• What this country needs are more unemployed politicians. - Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995)

 

[downzero]

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. -- Henry David Thoreau

"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws...you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt."

-Ayn Rand

"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."

-Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

[Fletch]

"If the Devil had an evangelist, its name would be war."
--Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

"When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

"Politics should be limited in scope to war, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class."
-- P.J. O'Rourke

"The philosophy of protectionism is a philosophy of war. The wars of our age are not at variance with popular economic doctrines; they are, on the contrary, the inescapable result of consistent application of these doctrines."
-- Ludwig von Mises

"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
-- H. L. Mencken

"No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law."
-- Robert Heinlein

"...the purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not. And if you go by that understanding, then it all makes perfect sense."
-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo

"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 Heinlein

"If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you."
-- William E. Simon

"If men are good, you don't need government; if men are evil or ambivalent, you don't dare have one."
-- Robert LeFevre

"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort."
-- Robert A. Heinlein

...and then there's my sig line:

 

[Ramen]

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.” - John Quincy Adams

 

[Turn Key]

good thread

this one has become a fact...

"We can't expect the American People to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of Socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have Communism."

~ (Nikita Khrushchev)


TK

 

[MWCMT]

I would much prefer to bring them down as soon as possible. I think they've made the biggest financial mess that any government's ever made in this country for a very long time, and Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money. It's quite a characteristic of them. They then start to nationalise everything, and people just do not like more and more nationalisation, and they're now trying to control everything by other means. They're progressively reducing the choice available to ordinary people. Look at the trouble now we're having with choice of schools. Of course parents want a say in the kind of education their children have. Look at the William Tyndall School—an example where the parents finally rebelled. Of course they did. These schools are financed by taxpayers' money, but the choice to parents is being reduced.
1976 Feb 5 Th
Margaret Thatcher
TV Interview for Thames TV This Week

http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102953


Summarized...

The problem with socialism is that eventually
you run out of other people’s money.

 

[steve666]

"Politics is like a bucket of s*!t with the handles on the inside... there is no way to pick it up without getting your hands dirty!!!"

 

[XMil]

[FONT=&quot] "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then."

-Thomas Jefferson
[/FONT]

 

[jbombelli]

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. -- Milton Friedman

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits. -- Richard Nixon

I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone. -- Barry Goldwater

The price of freedom is blood. The moment we are no longer willing to pay that price, we are no longer free. -- Me, 1984.

 

[whiskeytangofoxtrot]

Tag for later viewing, keep them coming!

 

[dross]

The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip ought to learn the difference on his own hide - Ayn Rand

 

[DragonGunner]

The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson


Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. It is force, and like fire, it is a dangerous servant an a fearful master. George Washington


Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes. exhausts. and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. John Adams.

Foreign influence is truly the Grecian horse to a republic. We cannot be to careful to exclude its influence. Alexander Hamilton

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. Thomas Jefferson