Frank Chodorov: Quotes about people

Frank Chodorov was American libertarian thinker. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Frank Chodorov: 88   quotes 0   likes

“[When people] say ‘let's do something about it’, they mean ‘let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.’ And that somebody is invariably you.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov (1980), p. 396, “Freedom is Better,” Plain Talk, (November 1949)

People

“The Constitution did not give Americans freedom; they had been free long before it was written, and when it was put up for ratification they eyed it suspiciously, lest it infringe their freedom. The Federalists, the advocates of ratification, went to great pains to assure the people that under the Constitution they would be just as free as they ever were.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 16

Pain , People , Freedom

“That is the central idea of our current tradition. It is the idealization of the mass and the negation of the individual; its panacea, its method of realization, is political direction; its goal, as always, is the undefined Good Society… The aim of pedagogy today is not to prepare the individual for his own enjoyment of life, but to enable him to better serve the mass machine; the psychologist makes adjustment to mass-thought the measure of healthy thinking and living; jurisprudence puts social responsibility ahead of individual responsibility; the concern of the scientist in the discovery of principles is secondary to his preoccupation with mass production; the economist studies institutions, not people; and philosophy rejects speculation as to the nature of man or the purpose of life as effort that might better be put to the practical problems of society. Ours is the culture of ‘the all,’ rather than ‘the one.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: One is A Crowd: Reflections of An Individualist (1952), pp. 36-37

Life , People , Idea , Nature

“The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 52

People , Sense , Freedom

“Compulsion means force; there must be a policeman to see that the individual does not follow his own inclinations. But policemen must live. Since they do not produce a thing by which they can live, others must support them. Hence, the planners must have the means of getting at the production of the very people who are to be improved by the policeman. That means taxes, and the more taxes the greater the number of enforcement agents, and therefore the more comprehensive the plan. No plan can be bigger than its bureaucracy. The income tax is the ideal instrument for the planner.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 54

People , Support

“Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 61

People , Freedom

“Income taxation appeals to the governing class because in its everlasting urgency for power it needs money. Income taxation appeals to the mass of people because it gives expression to their envy; it salves their sense of hurt. The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; although they delude themselves with the thought that they might get some of the pelt the fact is that the taxing of incomes cannot in any way improve their economic condition. So that, the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 27

Money , Hate , People , Way

“The State is that group of people who having got hold of the machinery of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to better their circumstances; that is, by use of the political means.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: Out of Step: The Autobiography of an Individualist (1962), p. 147

People

“Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers.”

Frank Chodorov

Source: The Rise & Fall of Society (1959), p. 54

People , World , Peace , Universe