“EXCISE — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.”

—  Samuel Johnson , book A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "EXCISE — A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired b…" by Samuel Johnson?
Samuel Johnson photo
Samuel Johnson 362
English writer 1709–1784

Related quotes

Charles Churchill (satirist) photo

“No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
To tax our labours and excise our brains.”

Charles Churchill (satirist) (1731–1764) British poet

Night, an Epistle to Robert Lloyd (1761), line 271

John Bright photo

“As to the Income Tax, my opinion is that the needful revenue would be fairly and most fairly raised if paid by property, and by individuals in proportion to their property…A Property Tax should be an assessment upon all land and buildings, and canals and railroads, but not on property such as machinery, stock in trade, etc. The aristocracy have squeezed all they can out of the mass of the consumers, and now they lay their daring hands on those not wholly impoverished.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to his sister Margaret on Sir Robert Peel's budget (1842), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 72-73.
1840s

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

“Sufficient private property in users' commodities is dependent upon the abolition of private property in primary means of production and distribution.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)
Context: Sufficient private property in users' commodities is dependent upon the abolition of private property in primary means of production and distribution. With less private property, we may have more private property and make available plenty for everyone.

Sydney Smith photo

“The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

"Review of Seybert’s Annals of the United States", published in The Edinburgh Review (1820)

Heather Brooke photo

“Transparency helps ensure that power is not abused or used to make the powerful, or their immediate families, rich. There is also a genuine public interest in ensuring that the people who make laws and levy tax are following those laws and paying their fair share of tax.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Thomas Paine photo

“There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

1790s, Letter to the Addressers (1792)

Adam Smith photo

“III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: (1776), Book V, Chapter II Part II, p. 893.

Henry George photo

“The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Book VIII, Ch. 3
Progress and Poverty (1879)

John Denham photo

“Let not the pleasing many thee delight,
First judge if those whom thou dost please judge right.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 229

Related topics