Quotes about tax
page 8

“I say legalize marijuana because we have a chance to leave this world a better place for our children. Marijuana legalization is job creation, tax dollars, something to rejuvenate our pathetic economy. This is a multibillion-dollar industry. This is about jobs; this is about economics; this is about freedom. This is about taking our country back.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Jesse Ventura's Marijuana Manifesto (2016), Introduction

Children, World, Freedom, Chance

“[Choir of] Women: It should not prejudice my voice that I'm not born a man, if I say something advantageous to the present situation. For I'm taxed too, and as a toll provide men for the nation.”

Aristophanés Lysistrata

tr. Lindsay 1925, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Lys.+649 Lysistrata, line 649-651 Lysistrata (411 BC)

Women, Men

“Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion! Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W. Well then, who will pay? School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war. Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq

Wisdom, Women, Money, War

“One of the hackneyed liberal complaints goes something like this: 'Bush is the first president in history to cut taxes during a war.' Nonsense. Bush didn’t cut taxes; he cut tax rates across the board - on income, dividends and capital gains. And that’s precisely why tax revenues have soared. When a department store wants to make more money, it doesn’t raise its prices, it cuts them and announces a big sale. If you want more work and investment, you hold a sale on economic activity by cutting tax rates, thereby reducing the cost of productive activity and increasing the prospect of after-tax returns on work and investment.”

Mike Rosen (1944) American political pundit

July 22, 2005 Rocky Mountain News column

Money, War, History

“Alexander was still the Greek avenger of Persian sacrilege who told his troops, it was said 'that Persepolis was the most hateful city in the world'. On the road there, he met with the families of Greeks who had deported to Persia by previous kings, and true to his slogan, he honoured them conspicuously, giving them money, five changes of clothing, farm animals, corn, a free passage home, and exemption from taxes and bureaucratic harassments.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.256

Money, Hate, World, Family

“When, therefore, we enter the realm of State action, everything is to be considered and weighed on its merits. Changes in death duties, income tax, land tenure, licensing, game laws, church establishment, feudal rights, slavery, and so on through all ages, have received the same denunciations from the absolutists of contract, who are the real parents of revolution.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), Ch. 2 : Public Finance and Changes in the Value of Money

Death, Age, Law, Game

“This chapter [of the destruction of temples], however, though significant, was only a part of the Muslim behaviour-pattern as recorded by Muslim historians of medieval India. The other parts were:
1) mass slaughter of people not only during war but also after the armies of Islam had emerged victorious;
2) capture of large numbers of non-combatant men, women and children as booty and their sale as slaves all over the Islamic world;
3) forcible conversion to Islam of people who were in no position to resist;
4) reduction to the status of zimmis or non-citizens of all those who could not be converted and imposition of inhuman disabilities on them;
5) emasculation of the zimmis by preventing them from possessing arms;
6) impoverishment of the zimmis through heavy discriminatory taxes and misappropriation of a major part of what the peasants produced;
7) ruination of the native and national culture of the zimmis by suppressing and holding in contempt all its institutions and expressions.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Women, Men, War, Children

“…this Budget represents a continuation of the policies which we have pursued consistently for nearly nine years, and which we will continue to pursue—a continuation of the steps that we have taken in nine previous Budgets, and of the major reforms that we have introduced in other fields, too, all of them designed to encourage and reward enterprise and so to liberate the energies of the British people. The tax changes in this Budget consolidate Britain's move from a high-tax country to a low-tax country, at all levels. Since 1979, the top rate of income tax has been cut from 83 per cent. to 40 per cent. The basic rate has been cut from 33 per cent. to 25 per cent. The corporation tax rate has been cut from 52 per cent. to 35 per cent. The small companies' rate has been cut from 42 per cent. to 25 per cent., and the 15 per cent. additional tax on savings income has been abolished altogether.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/mar/21/budget-resolutions-and-economic-situation in the House of Commons (21 March 1988)

People, Change, Country

“Tax reductions of the poor is an hollow idea. The critics of the decrease in taxation is based on harmful envy.”

Jyrki Katainen (1971) Finnish politician

Helsngin Sanomat 25.7.2008 A4 fi: Pienituloisten veronkevennykset on ontto ajatus. Veronkevennysten ja tukien arvostelu perustuu vahingolliseen kateuteen.

Idea, Envy

“I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist because of the response to Katrina represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today.”

George W. Bush book Decision Points

pp. 325, Chapter 10: Katrina https://books.google.com/books?id=iUJTvsUGWOcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=decision+points&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMImu6s8_WEyAIVjNkeCh1oFgyY#v=onepage&q=kanye&f=false 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010)

People, Way, Feeling, Time

“Obamacare is forcing the American people to buy health insurance or else pay a tax. Our health care system is moving toward one that rations care and negatively impact millions of Americans.”

Paul LePage (1948) American businessman, Republican Party politician, and the 74th Governor of Maine

Statement of Governor LePage on Gestapo Comment http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/index.php?topic=Gov+News&id=409920&v=article2011 (July 9, 2012)

People, Health

“All this talk of using tax policy to ‘assess social costs’…what a dumb idea. The only way to stop polluters is to put them against walls and shoot them.”

David Brin book Earth

Part VII (p. 327)
Earth (1990)

Way, Idea

“All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them are in favor of Hillary's socialist health-care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses — and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantánamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills.
All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! … Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the one burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

"What happened to your queer party-friends?" (22 January 2004) http://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2004/01/22/what_happened_to_your_queer_party-friends/page/full/ also in How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), p. 49. 2004

War, Health, Fear, Way

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes!”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (13 November 1789) First published in The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin (1817) p.266 https://books.google.de/books?id=jY8EAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA266&dq=constitution The Yale Book of Quotations quotes “‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes,” from Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston (1716). The YBQ also quotes “Death and Taxes, they are certain,” from Edward Ward, The Dancing Devils (1724). Epistles

Death, World, Appearance

“A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book I, On Production, Chapter XVII, Section I, p. 168

“Taxes are a barbaric remnant of ancient times in which early farmers, tied to the land, no longer able to roam freely, unable to fight back with awkward agricultural tools the way they once could with hunting implements, became victims, first, of itinerant plunderers, then of bandits settling down beside them to become the governments we know today.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Unnecessary Depression".

Way, Time, Fight

“As far as my tax returns, you don't learn that much from tax returns. That I can tell you. You learn a lot from financial disclosure. And you should go down and take a look at that.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, September, First presidential debate (September 26, 2016)

Learning

“Balancing fiscal and monetary policies is a problem. If you do just one thing, it is not necessarily enough—neither monetary policy alone nor fiscal policy alone, and neither tax cuts nor expenditure increases alone. You need to mix policy. By having the right balance, you can get high employment and stable prices.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Keynsianism Again: Interview with Lawrence Klein", Challenge (May-June 2001)

Problem

“I believe that all taxes are bad.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

CTV.ca news, December 1, 2005, "Tory tax cut promise dominates campaign".
2005

““Do you realize,” he asked, “that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its Golden Age? That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the Good Old Days?”
“I hadn’t thought of it in just those words, sir—”
“It is one of the most-avoided facts of life,” said the ambassador. “Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable.”

Murray Leinster book The Pirates of Zan

Source: The Pirates of Zan (1959), Chapter 2

Life, Death, Age, Imagination

“The antagonist to the Republican Party has been the Democrats, the party of collective subjugation and individual enslavement. Then physical, now economic. The first black members of the U. S. House and Senate were Republicans. The first civil rights legislation came from Republicans. Democrats gave us the KKK, Jim Crow, lynchings, poll taxes, literacy tests, and failed policies like the 'Great Society'. Republican President Eisenhower ordered troops to enforce school desegregation. Republican Senator Everett Dirksen enabled the 1964 civil rights legislation to pass, in opposition to Democrat Senators Robert Byrd, a KKK Grand Wizard, and Al Gore, Sr.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Voting Democratic for the next 200 years (2014)

School, Housing

“To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

First Speech on the Conciliation with America (1774)

Love, Men

“In the new money system we abolish interest and inflation, thereby reducing the prices of all goods and services as well as taxes by about 40%.”

Margrit Kennedy (1939–2013) German architect

Source: Interest and Inflation Free Money (1995), Chapter Three, Who Would Profit From a New Monetary System?, p. 66

Money

“The Hindus of this region had been victims of Muslim high-handedness for a long time, particularly in respect of their women. Murshid Qulî Khãn, the faujdãr of Mathura who died in 1638, was notorious for seizing “all their most beautiful women” and forcing them into his harem. “On the birthday of Krishna,” narrates Ma’sîr-ul-Umara, “a vast gathering of Hindu men and women takes place at Govardhan on the Jumna opposite Mathura. The Khan, painting his forehead and wearing dhoti like a Hindu, used to walk up and down in the crowd. Whenever he saw a woman whose beauty filled even the moon with envy, he snatched her away like a wolf pouncing upon a flock, and placing her in the boat which his men kept ready on the bank, he sped to Agra. The Hindu [for shame] never divulged what had happened to his daughter.” Another notorious faujdãr of Mathura was Abdu’n Nabî Khãn. He plundered the people unscrupulously and amassed great wealth. But his worst offence was the pulling down of the foremost Hindu temple in the heart of Mathura and building a Jãmi‘ Masjid on its site. This he did in AD 1660-61. Soon after, in 1665, Aurangzeb imposed a pilgrim tax on the Hindus. In 1668, he prohibited celebration of all Hindu festivals, particularly Holi and Diwali. The Jats who rightly regarded themselves as the defenders of Hindu hounour were no longer in a mood to take it lying. (Jadunath Sarkar, History of Aurangzeb, Vol. III, Calcutta, 1972 )”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Women, Men, People, Beauty

“You know, there are some people who were also put this decree in a difficult position, but still decided to pay a "tax". They think to themselves: let it be like to be. Let not mistaken, it came to nothing lead. If we do not protect each other, from the regime of the state of the power, to help each other, then no one will help us. It is the law by which our ancestors lived. If your relative is bad — all the relatives came to the rescue. If your neighbour is bad — all quit their job and help bad one. If your friend is bad — all considered it their duty to help. We need to stand behind each other as a wall. Only then we can survive!”

Uladzimir Nyaklyayew (1946) Belarusian politician and writer

Source: Comment on the unemployment tax, which introduced Lukashenka, Некляев о Марше 17 февраля: Нужно стоять друг за друга стеной https://charter97.org/ru/news/2017/2/14/240865/ // Charter'97 (in Russian).

People, Law, Thinking, Help

“[Tax] dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good — things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

2014 Source: Referring to a $211,000 USDA study seeking ways to better control Bactrocera oleae, which is harmful to American agriculture. http://www.livescience.com/health/081104-bad-fruit-flies.html

Flying

“The bottom line is more tax money is going to be needed. Just how much will be the primary issue on the agenda when Congressional leaders meet with the President later today, Wednesday, May the 9th, 1990. And good morning, welcome to Today. It’s a Wednesday morning, a day when the budget picture, frankly, seems gloomier than ever. It now seems the time has come to pay the fiddler for our costly dance of the Reagan years.”

Bryant Gumbel (1948) American sportscaster

Leading off Today, May 9, 1990 Real Video http://www.mediaresearch.org/rm/projects/99/Gumbel2/segment1.ram

Money, Time, Dance

“The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government’s agents may, under the law, invade the employer’s office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government.”

Frank Chodorov (1887–1966) American libertarian thinker

Source: The Income Tax: Root of All Evil (1954), p. 43

Law, Penalty

“As long as they (government) make businesses grow in the country, as long as we collect more taxes, as long as we use those taxes efficiently, I think the confidence will come back, every one will be very happy with whatever government is in the Centre and we will be better country.”

N. R. Narayana Murthy (1946) Indian businessman

Narayana Murthy shocks with 'Mera Bharat Mahaan' quote, indicates Infosys Ltd on hiring spree, 16k jobs on offer

Happiness, Confidence, Business, Thinking

“Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

V. "Do not resist the evil-doer" is an allusion to the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:39.
A Letter to a Hindu (1908)

World, Law, Evil, Parting

“A second justification for corporate taxation is that the corporation receives a number of special privileges from society, the most important of which is limited liability of the stockholders. The corporation tax can be viewed as a user fee for this benefit.”

Harvey S. Rosen (1949) American economist

Source: Public Finance - International Edition - Sixth Edition, Chapter 17, The Corporation Tax, p. 399

“Have you ever asked yourselves why Mafias from all over the world are constantly opening restaurants, cafes or shops? Because this type of commercial activity has huge amounts of cash coming in. A Mafioso businessman’s number one priority is not to make money, but to hand out receipts in order to justify money that he already has. In Italy, where tax avoidance is extremely high, we know that when a shopkeeper is reluctant to give you a receipt he or she is almost definitely committing an offence, but almost definitely not a Mafioso. Businesses run by the Mafia will always give you a receipt. And the Russian Mafia, in the years of the wavering ruble, safely stored away its money in London’s luxury homes, fuelling London’s property bubble with dirty money. The fictitious buying and selling of property is one of organised crime’s favourite ways of laundering money. … This is how entire neighbourhoods in London are becoming unoccupied, turning into investments’ empty spaces. Money moves in, and people move out.”

Roberto Saviano (1979) Italian journalist, writer and essayist

Dirty Money in London event (2016)

Money, People, World, Way

“In this country, we believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential, from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children, and we're all Americans. We believe -- we believe in low taxes, spending discipline, and open markets. We believe in rewarding hard work and risk-takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

2000s, 2008, (2008)

God, Children, People, Boy

“If you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back. If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you. If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

2010s, (July 26, 2016)

Love, Hate, People, Law

“The Muslim Mashaikh were as keen on conversions as the Ulama, and contrary to general belief, in place of being kind to the Hindus as saints would, they too wished the Hindus to be accorded a second class citizenship if they were not converted. Only one instance, that of Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangoh, need be cited because he belonged to the Chishtia Silsila considered to be the most tolerant of all Sufi groups. He wrote letters to Sultan Sikandar Lodi, Babur and Humayun to re-invigorate the Shariat and reduce the Hindus to payers of land tax and Jiziyah. To Babur he wrote,
“Extend utmost patronage and protection to theologians and mystics… that they should be maintained and subsidized by the state… No non-Muslim should be given any office or employment in the Diwan of Islam. Posts of Amirs and Amils should be barred to them. Furthermore, in confirmity with the principles of the Shariat they should be subjected to all types of indignities and humiliations. The non-Muslims should be made to pay Jiziyah, and Zakat on goods be levied as prescribed by the law. They should be disallowed from donning the dress of the Muslims and should be forced to keep their Kufr concealed and not to perform the ceremonies of their Kufr openly and freely… They should not be allowed to consider themselves equal to the Muslims.””

Abdul Quddus Gangohi (1456–1537) Sufi poet

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6

Law

“A religious minority is a law unto itself. The institutions run by it enjoy protection both from their staff as well as from the Government. Their properties are safe and their management secure from Government intervention, very unlike institutions run by Hindus which enjoy no such protection and which are subject to all kinds of interference from a Government which takes pride in being ‘secular’, and which has developed aversion of secularity informed by anti-Hindu animus. The Indian Express reports ( 28/29 January, ’86 ) that the famous temple of Lord Venkateswara at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh has been ordered to pay rupees twenty crores as tax on the “sales” of prasadam since 1975! The Aurangzebi spirit is very much alive. Favoured treatment and discriminatory taxes have been used by Governments in the past to promote particular culture-groups and destroy others.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Ramakrishna Mission. (1986). Ramakrishna Mission: In search of a new identity.

Law, Past

“I am the only major best-selling novelist in the United States who is not tainted by "liberalism" and Communism, and who has never belonged to a Communist front. As a result, the press, which is mainly "liberal", has been furiously attacking me for years in their alleged "reviews."… In our bitterness, we are beginning to wonder what protection an antiCommunist has in the United States now, had we been Communists we'd have had the enthusiastic support of the press and would now be very wealthy, for, as liberal writers told me in New York, with contempt, that had we been "liberals" we'd not have had to pay any taxes, or only token payments.”

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

Letter to the Federal Bureau of Investigation http://www.peterbgemma.com/2013/07/no-eunuch-ever-wrote-a-book/ (1957) 1950s

Communication, Support

“All that stuff with the tabloids is a kind of luxury tax I pay for all the good things I do in my life.”

Ethan Hawke (1970) American actor and writer

The Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/3620967/Love-that-goes-with-the-flow.html (2004-06-19) 2000&ndash;2004

Life

“I was trying to write a book that simply would not come. I did my daily five hundred words, but the characters never began to live. So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one’s days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and change conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends. But this hate and suspicion, this passion to destroy went deeper than the book – the unconscious worked on it instead…”

Graham Greene book The End of the Affair

Bk. 1, ch. 2
The End of the Affair (1951)

Hate, Books, Problem, Passion

“I had Piers Morgan call me a bigot. Because I believe what the Catholic Church teaches with respect to homosexuality, I'm a bigot. So now I'm a bigot? Because I believe what the Bible teaches. Now, 2,000 years of teaching and moral theology is now bigoted! And of course we don't elect bigots to office. We don't give them professional licenses. We don't give them preferential tax treatment. If you're a preacher and you preach bigoted things, you think you're gonna be allowed to have a 501(c)(3) as a church? Of course not. No, this has profound consequence! To the entire moral ecology of America! It will undermine the family; it will destroy faith in America!”

Rick Santorum (1958) American politician

Rick Santorum Argues With A Student Over Gay Marriage, Fails
Buzzfeed
2011-08-31
Matt
Stopera
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/rick-santorum-argues-with-a-student-over-gay-marri
2011-09-02
referring to Piers Morgan asking him "And I have to say that your views you espoused on this issue are bordering on bigotry, aren't they?" on

Family, Faith, Thinking

“I do want to reduce the income tax and if possible, eliminate the income tax…The first thing you do is balance the budget, then reduce the size of government.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

2000s

“You could say that GDP (National Income) and prosperity and wealth grows fastest when income tax rates are highest. And wealth slows, the economy slows, when taxes are cut. That's counter intuitive but if you look at any chart comparing tax rates and economic growth rates that's what you find. The 19th century knew it, the 18th century knew it but today you have a kind of counter revolution of junk economics that is basically anti-labor economics.”

Michael Hudson (economist) (1939) American economist

"Higher Taxes on Top 1% Equals Higher Productivity", Video Interview (13:28), The Real News Network (TRNN) http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6000 (January 1, 2011)

Wealth

“The Queen of England has more cause to procure the preservation of the Low Countries in their ancient estate in the obedience of the house of Burgundy than any other place hath…Now if the Low Countries should either be subdued to the Spaniards or possessed by the French, England cannot continue this manner of league. For if the Spaniard shall possess this country by conquest, as otherwise they cannot, then must they also govern it as conquers—that is build in every country and special towns, forts and castles which must be kept and guarded with Spaniards…To maintain these the King must continue great taxes…and there will be no reason to stop him but he will set what tax he listeth upon the commodities of England and so shall England wax poor to make him rich. And then England will have no remedy.”

William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley (1520–1598) English statesman

Memorandum from approximately the beginning of 1576.
Conyers Read, Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth (London: Jonathan Cape, 1960), p. 166.

Housing, Country

“Inland, all except criminals lived in a tightly pulled net of regulations, duties, social standing, tax collection, expectations of how to act and speak and think—“sort of like late twentieth-century USA” Everard grumbled to himself.”

Poul Anderson (1926–2001) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Death and the Knight (p. 752)
Time Patrol

Thinking

“…it is already clear that the policies that we have been pursuing have brought about a profound cultural change in this country. That, indeed, is what it is all about. For that cultural change is the only route to the economic success that we all wish to see, and which is no longer promise but reality. No longer do people accept that economic policy should be about regulating everyone's lives and imposing penal tax rates, in the illusion that that will benefit those on lower incomes. Instead, it is now widely recognised except on the Opposition Benches that one cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor and that there are enormous benefits in getting the state off people's backs, in transferring decision-making from the state to the people. And it is now abundantly clear that giving greater freedom and greater incentives has removed the shackles that have held back Britain for so many years and has liberated a great surge in enterprise.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/mar/21/budget-resolutions-and-economic-situation in the House of Commons (21 March 1988)

People, Reality, Decision, Freedom

“The contented and economically comfortable have a very discriminating view of government. Nobody is ever indignant about bailing out failed banks and failed savings and loans associations… But when taxes must be paid for the lower middle class and poor, the government assumes an aspect of wickedness.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Guardian [UK] (23 May 1992)

“It is my opinion, that this kingdom has no right to lay a tax upon the colonies. At the same time I assert the authority of this kingdom over the colonies to be sovereign and supreme in every circumstance of Government and legislation whatsoever. The colonists are the subjects of this kingdom, equally entitled with yourselves to all the natural rights of mankind and the peculiar privileges of Englishmen… The Americans are the sons, not the bastards, of England. Taxation is no part of the governing or legislative power… When, therefore, in this House we give and grant, we give and grant what is our own. But in an American tax, what do we do? We, your Majesty's Commons for Great Britain, give and grant to your Majesty,— what? Our own property?— No! We give and grant to your Majesty, the property of your Majesty's Commons of America… The distinction between legislation and taxation is essentially necessary to liberty… There is an idea in some, that the colonies are virtually represented in this House… Is he represented by any knight of the shire, in any county in this kingdom?… Or will you tell him that he is represented by any representative of a borough?— a borough which perhaps its own representatives never saw.— This is what is called the rotten part of the constitution. It cannot continue a century. If it does not drop, it must be amputated… I rejoice that America has resisted. Three millions of people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as voluntarily to let themselves be made slaves, would have been fit instruments to make slaves of all the rest… The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when were they made slaves?”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons on the Stamp Act (14 January 1766), quoted in William Pitt, The Speeches of the Right Honourable the Earl of Chatham in the Houses of Lords and Commons: With a Biographical Memoir and Introductions and Explanatory Notes to the Speeches (London: Aylott & Jones, 1848), pp. 71-6.

People, Feeling, Idea, Nature

“We must aim to make Canada a lower tax jurisdiction than the United States.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Vancouver Province, April 6, 2004: On Taxes.
2004

“Q: …he said, I am not going to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000. Is that pledge still active?
Robert Gibbs: We are going to let the process work its way through.”

Robert Gibbs (1971) 28th White House Press Secretary

Press Briefing, June 29, 2009 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Briefing-by-White-House-Press-Secretary-Robert-Gibbs-6-29-09/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTmkB3NUL6Y

Way

“The next most pressing problem was the better ordering of the finances of the Nation. Our Government was costing almost more than it was worth. It had more people on the pay roll than were necessary, all of which made expenses too much and taxes too high. This inflated condition contributed to the depression which began in 1920. But the Government expenditures have been almost cut in two, taxes have been twice reduced, and the incoming Congress will provide further reductions. Deflation has run its course and an era of business activity and general prosperity, exceeding anything ever before experienced in this country and fairly well distributed among all our people, is already at hand.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

People, Business, Problem, Country

“Yes, you and I will continue to pay taxes for the maintenance and upkeep of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. But we no longer own it. Now, the UN has ultimate jurisdiction.”

Texe Marrs (1944–2019) American writer

citation needed

Mountain

“It’s hard to find a political or business leader who doesn’t say they are worried about inequality. It’s even harder to find one who is doing something about it. Many are actively making things worse by slashing taxes and scrapping labor rights.”

Winnie Byanyima (1959) Ugandan aeronautical engineer, politician and diplomat

Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year - poorest half of humanity got nothing https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year, Oxfam International (22 January 2018)

Business

“I'm the one who will not raise taxes. My opponent now says he'll raise them as a last resort, or a third resort. But when a politician talks like that, you know that's one resort he'll be checking into. My opponent, my opponent won't rule out raising taxes. But I will. And The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again, and I'll say, to them, "Read my lips: no new taxes."”

George H. W. Bush (1924–2018) American politician, 41st President of the United States

RNC acceptance speech (1988)

Reading

““Under it there can be only one faith, one people and one all overriding authority. The State is a religious trust administered solely by His people (the faithful) acting in obedience to the Commander of the Faithful, who was in theory, and very often in practice too, the supreme General of the Army of militant Islam (Janud). There could be no place for non-believers. Even Jews and Christians could not be full citizens of it, though they somewhat approached the Muslims by reason of their being ‘People of the Book’ or believers in the Bible, which the Prophet of Islam accepted as revealed… “As for the Hindus and Zoroastrians, they had no place in such a political system. If their existence was tolerated, it was only to use them as hewers of wood and drawers of water, as tax-payers, ‘Khiraj-guzar’, for the benefit of the dominant sect of the Faithful. They were called Zimmis or people under a contract of protection by the Muslim State on condition of certain services to be rendered by them and certain political and civil disabilities to be borne by them to prevent them from growing strong. The very term Zimmi is an insulting title. It connotes political inferiority and helplessness like the status of a minor proprietor perpetually under a guardian; such protected people could not claim equality with the citizens of the Muslim theocracy.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Jadunath Sarkar, cited in R.C. Majumdar (ed.), The History of the Indian People and Culture, Volume VI, The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, 1960, pp. 617-18. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

People, Books, Faith, Strong

“Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
…
One has to try to develop one's inner feelings, which can be done simply by training one's mind. This is a priceless human asset and one you don't have to pay income tax on!
…
First one must change. I first watch myself, check myself, then expect changes from others.
…
Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.
…
I myself feel, and also tell other Buddhists that the question of Nirvana will come later.
There is not much hurry.
If in day to day life you lead a good life, honesty, with love,
with compassion, with less selfishness,
then automatically it will lead to Nirvana.
…
The universe that we inhabit and our shared perception of it are the results of a common karma. Likewise, the places that we will experience in future rebirths will be the outcome of the karma that we share with the other beings living there. The actions of each of us, human or nonhuman, have contributed to the world in which we live. We all have a common responsibility for our world and are connected with everything in it.
…
If the love within your mind is lost and you see other beings as enemies, then no matter how much knowledge or education or material comfort you have, only suffering and confusion will ensue.
…
It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.
…
Whenever Buddhism has taken root in a new land, there has been a certain variation in the style in which it is observed. The Buddha himself taught differently according to the place, the occasion and the situation of those who were listening to him.
…
Samsara - our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence- are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
…
According to Buddhist practice, there are three stages or steps. The initial stage is to reduce attachment towards life.
The second stage is the elimination of desire and attachment to this samsara. Then in the third stage, self-cherishing is eliminated.
…
The creatures that inhabit this earth-be they human beings or animals-are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world.
…
To develop genuine devotion, you must know the meaning of teachings. The main emphasis in Buddhism is to transform the mind, and this transformation depends upon meditation. in order to meditate correctly, you must have knowledge.
…
Anything that contradicts experience and logic should be abandoned.
…
The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis.
…
From one point of view we can say that we have human bodies and are practicing the Buddha's teachings and are thus much better than insects. But we can also say that insects are innocent and free from guile, where as we often lie and misrepresent ourselves in devious ways in order to achieve our ends or better ourselves. From this perspective, we are much worse than insects.
…
When the days become longer and there is more sunshine, the grass becomes fresh and, consequently, we feel very happy. On the other hand, in autumn, one leaf falls down and another leaf falls down. The beautiful plants become as if dead and we do not feel very happy. Why? I think it is because deep down our human nature likes construction, and does not like destruction. Naturally, every action which is destructive is against human nature. Constructiveness is the human way. Therefore, I think that in terms of basic human feeling, violence is not good. Non-violence is the only way.
…
We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and, therefore, largely ignored.
…
The fundamental philosophical principle of Buddhism is that all our suffering comes about as a result of an undisciplined mind, and this untamed mind itself comes about because of ignorance and negative emotions. For the Buddhist practitioner then, regardless of whether he or she follows the approach of the Fundamental Vehicle, Mahayana or Vajrayana, negative emotions are always the true enemy, a factor that has to be overcome and eliminated. And it is only by applying methods for training the mind that these negative emotions can be dispelled and eliminated. This is why in Buddhist writings and teachings we find such an extensive explanation of the mind and its different processes and functions. Since these negative emotions are states of mind, the method or technique for overcoming them must be developed from within. There is no alternative. They cannot be removed by some external technique, like a surgical operation."”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Dzogchen: The Heart Essence of the Great Perfection, Snow Lion Publications, Ithaca, 2004

Love, Life, War, Happiness

“When more than 90% of the gains have gone to the top 1%, that's where the money is. And we are going to follow the money. And if companies take tax breaks and then ship jobs overseas, we'll make them pay us back. And we'll put that money to work where it belongs … creating jobs here at home!”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Money, Home

“Once in the 1930s, the Inland Revenue did an investigation into Yeats's tax returns because they could not believe someone so famous could have such small sales. One should never allow oneself to be discouraged by small sales. As Pinter says, I stuck to my guns.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

14th time lucky (2005)

“The fact of it is that all of us agreed to save 6d. in the Income Tax by breaking up the Army in peace-time and not having it prepared when war broke out…I will never be a party to it again.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

Hansard, House of Commons, 5th series, vol. 376, col. 1336.
Speech in the House of Commons, 4 December 1941.

War, Peace, Time

“The organization in which this movement was embodied, after three centuries of obscurity and oppression, rose triumphant to be the dominant power of the civilized world. Christian churches were scattered broadcast over the Roman Empire. …Its churches were endowed with the ancient properties and rights of the temples. Its clergy were given immunity from the taxes and exactions which crushed all other classes. Its members filled the civil service. Its great bishops had the ear of the men in power.”

Walter Rauschenbusch (1861–1918) United States Baptist theologian

Source: Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907), Ch.4 Why Has Christianity Never Undertaken the Work of Social Reconstruction?, p. 143-144

Men, World

“[Gary] Hart was clearly the most attractive candidate, the only one with even a remote chance of beating Ronald Reagan, so naturally the Democrats selected: Walter Mondale. When Mondale accepted the nomination, he wooed the voter by informing them…that if they elected him as president, his first move would be to jack up their income taxes. Walter you sweet talker!”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Nonfiction, Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway (2001)

Nature, Chance

“Will the tax cut destroy America’s prosperity? Probably not. As Adam Smith observed, there’s a deal of ruin in a nation. We have a huge, resilient economy that can survive and recover from even quite bad government policies.
Yet while the tax cut may not be a matter of economic life or death, it is a very serious issue. For one thing, like it or not, the tax cut has become the central political issue in the United States right now. Conservatives who want to reshape America view passage of a large tax cut as a first step toward realizing their vision. For that reason, those who do not share this vision feel, rightly, that they must oppose the plan.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

Introduction
Fuzzy Math: The Essential Guide to the Bush Tax Plan (2001)

Life, Death, Feeling

“Now, everything Marx did was intentionally anti-Christian. If the Bible is for it, he's against it. See, the Bible makes private property a real serious issue. Ownership of private property is critical. You can't have freedom without property rights. What good does it do to say that you have all kinds of freedom if there's no place to exercise your freedom? […] You could not possibly lose your property permanently in the Biblical system. Since every man has his own vine and his own fig tree, drink waters out of your own cistern, waters out of your own well. Private property is essential. […] Karl Marx developed the idea of a graduated income tax. The more you make, the more they take. That's Karl Marx's idea. He's said, "You need to abolish rights of inheritance." The Bible says a good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children. Karl Marx was against that. Confiscate property rights. Evolution is a foundation of Communist philosophy behind the money powers. Karl Marx said, "We need a central bank." This was a Communist idea. The banking system we're using today in America, the Federal Reserve, is a direct result of Karl Marx's thinking. There is nothing Federal about it. It's private bankers that run our currency. The Bible says, "The love of money is the root of all evil". All evil.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Love, Money, Children, Exercises

“My perfect Sunday would be a chilled, calming day, nothing too taxing. I try to watch films at the cinema whenever I can, or I go for a walk down by the river. … Richard and I might then try out a new restaurant we’ve heard about. I’m vegetarian and I love it that there are so many places in London with great veggie food. … I’ve got my own little fan group who call themselves the Sprouts, because of my obsession with Brussels sprouts, and they’re a fantastic group of girls that I chat to all the time. … Otherwise – this is embarrassing to admit – Richard and I will play Call of Duty. It’s a side of me that not a lot of people know about but I was a big games girl when I was a teenager and computer games are my guilty pleasure.”

Samantha Barks (1990) Manx singer and actress

“Samantha Barks: I'm addicted to Call of Duty,” interview with The Telegraph (4 August 2014) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/11003183/.html.

Love, People, Pleasure, Food

“Eliminate all forms of monopolistic market power, to include the breakup of large oligopolistic corporations and application of anti-trust laws to labor unions. A Federal incorporation law could be used to limit corporation size and where technology required giant firms for reasons of low cost production the Federal government should own and operate them… Promote economic stability by reform of the monetary system and establishment of stable rules for monetary policy… Reform the tax system and promote equity through income tax… Abolish all tariffs… Limit waste by restricting advertising and other wasteful merchandising practices.”

Henry Calvert Simons (1899–1946) American economist

A Positive Program for Laissez Faire, (1934)

Law

“There is no conservative party in Washington. There is a Democratic Party of tax-and-spend and a Republican Party of guns and butter and tax cuts, too. Washington is all accelerator, the brakes are gone.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“The "Cabinet meeting" of the Chinese government is really quick in yielding. Even the fart of foreigners can be taken as "fragrance." The Cabinet meeting lifts the cotton export ban because foreigners want cotton; it orders "all provinces to stop collecting the cigarette tax" because foreigners want to import cigarettes. Let the 400 million compatriots again think it over: Isn't it correct to say that the Chinese government is the bookkeeper of foreigners?”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

"Cigarette Tax," Hsiang-Tao Chou-Pao, no. 38, August 29, 1923, in Collected Works of Mao Tse-Tung (1917-1949) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/collected-works-pdf/index.htm, vol. 1 (United States Joint Publications Research Service, 1978), 48. Original: (zh-CN) 中国政府的“阁议”，真是又敏捷又爽快，洋大人打一个屁都是好的“香气”，洋大人要拿棉花去，阁议就把禁棉出口令取消；洋大人要送纸烟来，阁议就“电令各该省停止征收纸烟税”。再请四万万同胞想一想，中国政府是洋大人的账房这句话到底对不对？

Thinking

“Food redistribution is one of the best win-win solutions for food waste avoidance. Food companies can often save money by donating food rather than paying the £80 or so per tonne in landfill tax and disposal costs.”

Tristram Stuart (1977) British historian

"Food redistribution is a win-win solution for food waste" https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/food-waste-redistribution-sustainable-solution, The Guardian (11 May 2012).

Money, Food

“It began to worry me that I could never possibly settle in England now, not after Tokyo nude-shows and sliced green chillies, brown children sluicing at the road-pump, the air-conditioned hum in bedrooms big as ballrooms, negligible income-tax, curry tiffins, being the big man in the big car, the bars of all the airports of Africa and the East.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Children, Cars

“Dialogue in Hell:
limitation to the increase of taxes. So they conceived a scheme truly admirable for its simplicity…. A special fund was created, the capitalized resources of which are meant to be a permanent redemption of the public debt by successive fractions; so that every time the state borrows, it must endow the sinking fund with a certain capital for the purpose of liquidating the new debt at a given time….
Our system of accounting, fruit of long experience, is distinguished by the clarity and the certitude of its procedures. It obstructs abuses and gives to no one, from the smallest official to the chief of state himself, the means of diverting the least sum from its original purpose, or of making irregular use of it.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Hell, Time, Success

“Voters for decades were conned into thinking they were noisome minorities whose best path to influence is to make peace with the mightier "center," which inevitably turns out to support military interventionism, fewer taxes for the rich, corporate deregulation and a ban on unrealistic "giveaway" proposals like free higher education. Those are the realistic, moderate, popular ideas, we're told.But it's a Wizard of Oz trick, just like American politics in general. There is no numerically massive center behind the curtain. What there is instead is a tiny island of wealthy donors, surrounded by a protective ring of for-sale major-party politicians (read: employees) whose job it is to castigate too-demanding voters and preach realism.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"Goodbye, and Good Riddance, to Centrism" Rolling Stone, June 13, 2017 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-goodbye-and-good-riddance-to-centrism-w487628

Education, Peace, Idea, Support

“Despite declining catches, New England fishermen continue to receive state and federal tax incentives that encourage them — in some cases all but compel them — to acquire bigger boats and to harvest the seas more intensively. Today the fishermen of Massachusetts are reduced to fishing the hideous hagfish, for which there is a slight market in the Far East, but even their numbers are now falling.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Page 285
A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)

Fish, Sea

“The idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the cruelest delusions which has befuddled the human mind.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

A misquotation by Ronald Reagan in a 9 March 1982 speech, reported in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 13-14. In fact, Churchill used a very similar line ("To think you can make a man richer by putting on a tax is like a man thinking that he can stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle.") several times beginning with a speech at Free Trade Hall, Manchester, 19 February 1904.
Misattributed

Idea

“If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

As quoted in "Milton Friedman's Last Lunch" at Forbes.com (11 December 2006)

“You can't have a government like this without an income tax, but we don't want a government like this. This is not the type of government that was designed by the founders of the country. This is not what was written in the Constitution. We've only had an income tax since 1913. But if you want a welfare state, and if you want to police the world and pay for the defense of Japan and Germany, give foreign aid to the Soviet Union. You not only need the income tax you need the Federal Reserve to print up the money when the deficit is accumulated. So we think that government should be smaller. If government is small, then you don't need the income tax.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anmlPvmd1Ew
1980s

Money, World, Thinking, Country

“It is the gay lobby that is attempting to impose its will on bourgeois America by robbing them of their schools, their taxes, and their rights in order to subsidize a sexual preference. And they wonder why they are disliked by ordinary Americans!”

Jeffrey Tucker (1963) American writer

Source: The Love That Never Shuts Up - LewRockwell LewRockwell.com, LewRockwell.com, 2016-05-22 https://www.lewrockwell.com/2001/01/jeffrey-tucker/the-love-that-never-shuts-up/,

School

“Socialists then shift the ground for taking industries into “public ownership”. They then tell us that some industries cannot survive any longer unless they are taken into public ownership, allegedly to protect the public from the effects of their collapse. It all sounds so cosy, and so democratic. But is it true? No, of course it isn't. The moment ownership passes into the name of the public is the moment the public ceases to have any ownership or accountability, and often the moment when it ceases to get what it wants. But it is invariably the moment when the public starts to pay. Pays to take the industry over. Pays the losses by higher taxes. Pays for inefficiencies in higher prices.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Finchley Conservatives (31 January 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102947 Leader of the Opposition

Loss

“The Budget…is introduced not merely for the purpose of raising barren taxes, but taxes that are fertile, taxes that will bring forth fruit—the security of the country which is paramount in the minds of all. The provision for the aged and deserving poor—was it not time something was done? It is rather a shame for a rich country like ours—probably the richest in the world, if not the richest the world has ever seen—should allow those who have toiled all their days to end in penury and possibly starvation. It is rather hard that an old workman should have to find his way to the gates of the tomb, bleeding and footsore, through the brambles and thorns of poverty. We cut a new path for him—an easier one, a pleasanter one, through fields of waving corn. We are raising money to pay for the new road—aye, and to widen it, so that 200,000 paupers shall be able to join in the march. There are so many in the country blessed by Providence with great wealth, and if there are amongst them men who grudge out of their riches a fair contribution towards the less fortunate of their fellow-countrymen they are very shabby rich men.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Limehouse, East London (30 July 1909), quoted in Better Times: Speeches by the Right Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Chancellor of the Exchequer (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1910), p. 145.
Chancellor of the Exchequer

Men, Money, Age, World

“Hillary causes the greatest refugee crisis since World War II. Now she wants a 25% gun tax to make sure you can't defend yourself from the onslaught. Did I catch your attention yet?”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation
The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2015-09-09
Radio, 46:45
2015

War, World

“…for nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Book I, Chapter 6
The History of Tom Jones (1749)

“There are many reasons there was higher inflation in the 1970s. But that is a complicated story that deals with much more than tax policies.”

Lawrence Klein (1920–2013) American economist

"Keynsianism Again: Interview with Lawrence Klein", Challenge (May-June 2001)

“The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham said, in future what are you going to tax when you will want more money? He also not merely assumed but stated that you could not depend upon any economy in armaments. I think that is not so. I think he will find that next year there will be substantial economy without interfering in the slightest degree with the efficiency of the Navy. The expenditure of the last few years has been very largely for the purpose of meeting what is recognised to be a temporary emergency. … It is very difficult for one nation to arrest this very terrible development. You cannot do it. You cannot when other nations are spending huge sums of money which are not merely weapons of defence, but are equally weapons of attack. I realise that, but the encouraging symptom which I observe is that the movement against it is a cosmopolitan one and an international one. Whether it will bear fruit this year or next year, that I am not sure of, but I am certain that it will come. I can see signs, distinct signs, of reaction throughout the world. Take a neighbour of ours. Our relations are very much better than they were a few years ago. There is none of that snarling which we used to see, more especially in the Press of those two great, I will not say rival nations, but two great Empires. The feeling is better altogether between them. They begin to realise they can co-operate for common ends, and that the points of co-operation are greater and more numerous and more important than the points of possible controversy.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1914/jul/23/finance-bill on the day the Austrian ultimatum was sent to Serbia (23 July 1914); The "neighbour" mentioned is Germany. Chancellor of the Exchequer

Money, World, Feeling, Thinking

“When the “environmental revolution” arrived in the 1960s, economists were ready and waiting. The economic literature contained an apparently coherent view of the nature of the pollution problem together with a compelling set of implications for public policy. In short, economists saw the problem of environmental degradation as one in which economic agents imposed external costs upon society at large in the form of pollution. With no “prices” to provide the proper incentives for reduction of polluting activities, the inevitable result was excessive demands on the assimilative capacity of the environment. The obvious solution to the problem was to place an appropriate “price,” in this case a tax, on polluting activities so as to internalize the social costs. Marshall and Pigou had suggested such measures many decades earlier. Moreover, pollution and its control through so-called Pigouvian taxes had become a standard textbook case of the application of the principles of microeconomic theory. Economists were thus ready to provide counsel to policy makers on the design of environmental policy.”

William J. Baumol (1922–2017) American economist

Source: The theory of environmental policy, 1988, p. 1

Literature, Nature, Problem, Waiting

“One writer quite cutely remarks that his best work of fiction was his Income Tax Return.”

Peter de Noronha (1897–1970) Indian businessman

The Pageant of Life (1964), On Writers

“Times are not good here. The city is crumbling into ashes. It has been buried under a lava flood of taxes and frauds and maladministrations so that it has become only a study for archaeologists. Its condition is so bad that when I write about it, as I intend to do soon, nobody will believe I am telling the truth. But it is better to live here in sackcloth and ashes than to own the whole state of Ohio.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Inventing New Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn.

Truth, Fraud, Study, Time

“All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894)

Law

“You find that along with the culture of death go all kinds of other law-breaking: not following good sanitary procedure, giving abortions to women who are not actually pregnant, cheating on taxes, all these kinds of things, misuse of anesthetics so that people die or almost die. All of these things are common practice, and all of that information is available for America.”

Todd Akin (1947) American politician

House of Representatives session http://www.c-spanvideo.org/clip/4001030, , quoted in * 2012-10-02 New Todd Akin Videos Reveal His Dystopian Nightmare Vision of America Amanda Marcotte XX Factor Slate http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/10/02/todd_akin_videos_cspan_clips_reveal_the_missouri_candiate_s_paranoia_about_abortion_and_stem_cell_research_.html

Death, Women, People, Law

“There are men who cry out, 'We must sacrifice'. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor? Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them. But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty. I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need. And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great chamber. The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation. First is growth—the national prosperity which supports the well-being of our people and which provides the tools of our progress. I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This nation is flourishing. Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past five years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent. More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of two and a half million jobs. Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past five years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent. Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past five years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men, Money, Children, People

“By comparative standards, the country is undertaxed. And it's also regressively taxed, the tax burden falls mostly on the poor. What we need is a progressive tax system, of, incidentally, the kind that Jefferson advocated. You know, traditional libertarians, like Jefferson, advocated sharply progressive taxes, because they wanted a system of relative equality, knowing that that's a prerequisite for democracy. Jefferson specifically advocated it. We don't have it anymore, it's sort of there in legislation but it's gone. What we need is different social policies. And social policies which ought to be funded by the people who are going to benefit from it, that's the general public. So we'd be a lot better off if we were higher taxed, and it was used for proper purposes. And we know what those are. I mean, for example, for women taking care of children. You know, it makes sense to pay them for that work, they're doing important work for the society. [applause] And they should be paid for it, but that requires tax payments. And the same is true about protection of the environment.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Education and Democracy, 1995

Women, Children, People, Democracy

“We can start to clean up these terribly burdensome regulations. We can make the tax code much simpler, much flatter, so that it works for everyday people, so we’re incentivizing work. And I want to go down there and actually get things done”

Patrick Morrisey (1967) West Virginia politician

West Virginia AG Patrick Morrisey: Washington Is Broken, and Sen. Manchin Is Part of the Swamp http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/10/13/wv-ag-morrisey-washington-broken-manchin-swamp/ (October 13, 2017)

People

“If it wasn't about race, y'know, if it was really about what the Tea Party says their issue is – deficits – who ran up all that debt? Bush! Where was the Tea Party then? The two wars we put on the credit card, the prescription drug program that wasn't paid for, the tax cuts that weren't paid for, where were they then? *crickets!* But as soon as President Nosferatu took office, then, suddenly, debt is intolerable. I think there's just something they don't like about him… I cannot put my finger on what it is… Just some way he's not like them… Skinny! That's probably what it is. He's skinny, and that's why they hate him… Oh, and also that he's a Muslim socialist out to destroy America and wave his African wonder-schlong in your daughter's face.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Crazy Stupid Politics (2012)

Hate, War, Way, Thinking

“If Karl Rove is watching today, Karl, I want you to hear me loud and clear: I am going to provide tax cuts to ease the burdens for 31 million American families — and lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty — by raising the taxes on 0.1 percent of families — those who make more than $1,000,000 a year. You don't have to read my lips, I'm saying it. And if that makes me an 'old-style' Democrat, then I accept that label with pride and I dare you to come after me for it.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

Families First tax plan speech (5 January 2004), reported in Clark unveils tax plan" — CNN (5 January 2004) http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/01/05/elec04.prez.clark.taxes/

Children, Family, Reading

“Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies.”

Leonard E. Read (1898–1983) American academic

I Prefer Security to Freedom (1962)

“I share in their outrage and the outrage is that we don’t have a system that has a level playing field. That the government picks winners and losers and in the case of Wall Street what absolutely outrages me is the fact that these people that made such incredibly bad decisions, and I’m believing that these decisions were not necessarily criminal or I think they would have been prosecuted, but that they were just horrible decisions. That they should have been rewarded with failure. Meaning they should have lost all of their money. But they didn’t loose all of their money did they? We bailed them out at the tune of a trillion bucks. You and I. You and I bailed them out. They continue to receive their bonuses and that is … that is the outrage and I share in that outrage… Government should be a level playing field where all of us have the same advantages and the same threats if you will. Implementing the Fair Tax for example throws out the entire Federal tax system. No income tax, no IRS, no business tax, no corporate tax and isn’t the fact that some people pay tax and others don’t isn’t it it the fact that some corporations pay tax and others don’t that has us outraged. It’s just not fair. Let’s implement something that totally fair and in fact is a system where you make the more you consume the more Fair Tax you’ll pay. In a Fair Tax environment you’ll be incentivised to save money.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

Statement made to representatives of the Pagan Newswire Collective (PNC)
2011-10-16
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/paganswithdisabilities/2011/10/full-transcript-of-qa-with-presidential-candidate-gary-johnson/
2012-02-24
Economic Policy

Money, People, Failure, Business

“Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don't have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolism; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.”

Seth Lloyd (1960) American engineer

Nature 430, 971 (26 August 2004); doi:10.1038/430971a

Life, Death, Money, School

“We have no plans to increase tax at all.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Philip Bassett, "Blair pledges he will not raise tax", The Times, 21 September 1995, p. 1.
Response to questioning about Labour Party tax plans at a CBI seminar in Birmingham, 20 September 1995.
1990s

“Unfortunately, the Laffer curve did not work as advertised. Lower tax rates did not produce more tax revenues. They produced deficits.”

Robert Kuttner (1943) American journalist

Source: The Economic Illusion (1984), Chapter 5, Taxes, p. 208
Context: The total impact of the Reagan tax cuts on capital lowered the effective cost of capital to American industry by an estimated 1.2 percent. Unfortunately, the Laffer curve did not work as advertised. Lower tax rates did not produce more tax revenues. They produced deficits.

“No doctor but the great doctor (Hanifa), to whose school we belong, has assented to the imposition of the jizya (poll tax) on Hindus. Doctors of other schools allow no other alternative but 'Death or Islam.'"”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Qazi Mughisuddin's reply to Sultan Alauddin Khalji. Tarikh-i Firoz Shahi, of Ziauddin Barani in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 184, chapter 15 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n199/mode/2up.Quoted in B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or The Partition of India (1946).  Quotes from Muslim medieval histories Context: The Sultan then asked, "How are Hindus designated in the law, as payers of tributes or givers of tribute? The Kazi replied, "They are called payers of tribute, and when the revenue officer demands silver from them, they should tender gold. If the officer throws dirt into their mouths, they must without reluctance open their mouths to receive it. By doing so they show their respect for the officer. The due subordination of the zimmi is exhibited in this humble payment and by this throwing of dirt in their mouths. The glorification of Islam is a duty, and contempt of the Religion is vain. God holds them in contempt, for he says, "keep them under in subjection". To keep the Hindus in abasement is especially a religious duty, because they are the most inveterate enemies of the Prophet, and because the Prophet has commanded us to slay them, plunder them, and make them captive, saying, 'Convert them to Islam or kill them, enslave them and spoil their wealth and property.' No doctor but the great doctor (Hanifa), to whose school we belong, has assented to the imposition of the jizya (poll tax) on Hindus. Doctors of other schools allow no other alternative but 'Death or Islam.'"

Death, School

“All real libertarians are dedicated to the eventual elimination of all taxes.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"The Unnecessary Depression".
Context: All real libertarians are dedicated to the eventual elimination of all taxes. That's one way you can tell them from the fakes. If anyone asks what government will run on, tell them it's not our problem. If they can create a 'government' that doesn't initiate force and steal from us, that doesn't break things and kill people in the enforcement of the will of parasites, that doesn't subsist by beating individuals up and killing them, they're welcome to try. Just leave us out of it altogether.

“The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay. In foreign policy, Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the 'high school sex promise': I'll pull out in time, honest!”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

"Letter to Our European Friends" (4 February 2008)

War, School, Sex, Time

“On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" in The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970) http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html Context: On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions. We have established elaborate constitutional, parliamentary and judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are imposed so far as possible in accordance with the preferences and desires of the public — after all, "taxation without representation" was one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of checks and balances to separate the legislative function of imposing taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of collecting taxes and administering expenditure programs and from the judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law. Here the businessman — self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockholders — is to be simultaneously legislator, executive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds — all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on.

Quotes about tax page 8

Quotes about tax
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