As quoted in The Times Herald, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1 December 1978)
Context: There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.
“The United States, for example, has never had a President as bad as George III, but neither has Britain had a king as admirable as George Washington (of whom William Thackeray rightly said that 'his glory will descend to remotest ages' while the memory of the sovereign went the other way). Still, even to concede this obvious argument is to make it plain that a bad monarch is at least as likely as a bad president even given the caprice of random selection by the hereditary principle…”
1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish
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Christopher Hitchens 305
British American author and journalist 1949–2011Related quotes
Speech at the National Press Club (2004)
2000s, Bush's Lincolnian Challenge (2002)
2000s, Interview with Peter Robinson (2009)
Frances Stevenson's diary entry (16 November 1934), A. J. P. Taylor (ed.), Lloyd George: A Diary (London: Hutchinson, 1971), p. 291
Post-Prime Ministerial
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“If I prove a bad president, I will also likely to prove the last president.”
Remark at the time of his first inauguration as quoted in The 168 days (1938) by Joseph Alsop and Turner Catledge, p. 15
1930s
Source: As quoted in The Human Odyssey: Volume 2 by Tanim Ansary et al, p. 653.
1970s, First Presidential address (1974)
Context: The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every President under the Constitution. But I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.
Therefore, I feel it is my first duty to make an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not an inaugural address, not a fireside chat, not a campaign speech — just a little straight talk among friends. And I intend it to be the first of many.
Opinion: Clinton or Trump – Better or Less Bad? http://english.aawsat.com/2016/11/article55361471/opinion-clinton-trump-better-less-bad, Ashraq Al-Awsat (November 4, 2016)