Liberty Quotes Dumping Thread (plz ignore)

[Guest]

Just going to use this thread to store my quotes

just ignore

"Forcing people to be more 'unselfish' creates animosity instead of good will. Trying to control selfish others is a cure worse than the disease. ... In trying to control others, we find ourselves controlled. We point fingers at the dictators, the Communists, the politicians, and the international cartels. We are blithely unaware that our desire to control selfish others creates and sustains them. Like a stone thrown in a quiet pond, our desire to control our neighbors ripples outward, affecting the political course of our community, state, nation, and world. Yet we know not what we do. We attempt to bend our neighbors to our will, sincere in our belief that we are benevolently protecting the world from their folly and short-sightedness. We seek control to create peace and prosperity, not realizing that this is the very means by which war and poverty are propagated. In fighting for our dream without awareness, we become the instruments of its destruction. If we could only see the pattern!"

-- Dr. Mary J. Ruwart

(1949- )

Source: Healing Our World, Introduction.

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Mary.Ruwart.Quote.B967

on the US income tax:

After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent with the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. The top rate exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. The first 1040 form -- instructions and all -- took up only four pages. Today there are some 4,000 pages of tax forms and instructions. American workers and business are forced to spend more than 5.4 billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Since those hours could be put to a more productive use, and almost surely would be in the absence of today’s incomprehensible tax code, the result is a large dead-weight output loss of some $200 billion each year. ... The IRS now has more enforcement personnel than the EPA, BATF, OSHA, FDA, and DEA combined. With its 115,000-man workforce, it has the power to search the property and financial documents of American citizens without a search warrant and to seize property from American citizens without a trial. It routinely does both. Economist James L. Payne has written a most revealing analysis of the IRS, a 1993 book entitled Costly Returns. He arrives at a stunning conclusion, the total cost to collect our federal taxes, including the effects on the economy as a whole adds up to an amazing 65 percent of all the tax dollars received annually. The U.S. tax system, says Payne, has produced hundreds of thousands of victims of erroneous IRS penalties, liens, levies, and tax advice. In answering taxpayer questions, for example, the IRS telephone information service has in previous years given about one-third of all callers -- as many as 8.5 million Americans -- the wrong answers to their questions. A 1987 General Accounting Office study found that 47 percent of a random sample of IRS correspondence -- including demands for payments -- contained errors. Incredibly a GAO audit of the IRS in 1993 found widespread evidence of financial malfeasance and gross negligence at the agency. The IRS could not account for 64 percent of its congressional appropriation!

-- Dr. Lawrence W. Reed

(1953-) President of the Foundation for Economic Education

Source: Taxes and Tyranny, THE UNREPORTED NEWS, August 27, 1995.

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Lawrence.Reed.Quote.0498

[Guest]

Congressman on the IRS

"Only the IRS can attach 100% of a tax debtor's wages and/or property.

Only the IRS can invade the privacy of a citizen without court process of any kind.

Only the IRS can seize property without a court order.

Only the IRS can force a citizen to try his case in a special court governed by the IRS.

Only the IRS can compel the production of documents, records, and other materials without a court case being in existence.

Only the IRS can with impunity publish the details of a citizens debt.

Only the IRS can legally, without a court order, subject citizens to electronic surveillance.

Only the IRS can force waiver of statute of limitations and other citizen's rights through the threat of Arbitrary assesment.

Only the IRS uses extralegal coercion. Threats to witnesses to examine their taxes regularly produces whatever evidence the IRS dictates.

Only the IRS is free to violate a written agreement with a citizen.

Only the IRS uses reprisals against citizen and public officials alike.

Only the IRS can take property on the basis of conjecture.

Only the IRS is free to maintain lists of citizen guilty of no crime for the purpose of harassing and monitoring them.

Only the IRS envelops all citizens.

Only the IRS publicly admits that it's purpose is to instill fear in the citizenry as a technique of performing it's function."

-- George V. Hansen

(1930-) US Congressman (R-ID)

Source: To Harass Our People, by George Hansen, (August 1993)

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/George.Hansen.Quote.1142

[Guest]

on government

"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is it's justice; that is it's morality."

-- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

(1809-1865) French mutualist political philosopher

Source: The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century, 1851

http://books.google.com/books?id=_apVMk2aEzQC

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Pierre-Joseph.Proudhon.Quote.B4C6

22nd US president on taxes

"When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation

than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction

becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a

free government."

-- Grover Cleveland

(1837-1908) 22nd & 24th US President

Source: Second Annual Message, December 1886

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Grover.Cleveland.Quote.F34D

[Guest]

On socialism

"Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions."

-- Auguste Comte

[isidore Marie Auguste François Xavier Comte] (1798-1857) French philosopher, was the founder of Positivism and Sociology

Source: Le catéchisme positiviste (1852), reproduit in Alain Laurent, L'Individu et ses ennemis (Paris: Hachette, 1987), pp. 255-256.

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Auguste.Comte.Quote.60C1

"... we understand only the individual's capacity to make sacrifices for the

community, for his fellow men."

-- Adolf Hitler

(1889-1945) German Nazi Dictator

October 7, 1933

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Adolf.Hitler.Quote.ED49

"What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

-- Rudolph W. Giuliani

(1944- ) Mayor of New York City from 1994-2001

Source: March 16, 1994, at symposium on urban crime sponsored by the New York Post

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/20/nyregion/freedom-is-about-authority-excerpts-from-giuliani-speech-on-crime.html

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Rudolph.Giuliani.Quote.6968

[Guest]

on propaganda:

"The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people

forget that certain other sets of people are human."

-- Aldous Huxley

(1894-1963) Author

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Aldous.Huxley.Quote.5962

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification."

-- George Orwell

[Eric Arthur Blair] (1903-1950) British author

Source: Politics and the English Language, 1946

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/George.Orwell.Quote.6BFD

[Snowtsuku]

One doesn't simply ignore Aaeru.

Why are you collecting quotes btw?

[Down]

Why are you collecting quotes btw?

To link people there when needed, I guess.

One usually uses pastebins or google docs for that, but since it's her forum...

[Guest]

for myself by Tom Woods:

I know. It sounds stupid and naïve. But I thought, when I wrote The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, I – honest to goodness, this is the absolute truth – I thought to myself, well, people might not agree with me, but as long as I put forth my views sincerely and as persuasively as I can, then they at least have to respect me.

(LAUGHTER)

So, in case you were thinking that, that's not going to happen. But particularly, think of it this way. If Rothbard had enemies among Libertarians, what hope is there for the rest of us? You just have to accept it. You have to just – (laughing) – live with it and move on. And don't dwell on it. Don't spend your life bitter, dwelling on every angry blog comment or – I mean, just don't do it. Rothbard wouldn't have done that. He spent his life in laughter; laughter, cackling laughter. That's what you should do. And I say this as somebody who – initially, when I started getting attacked. I go, oh, my gosh, I've got all this damage control to do. You know what? I sleep so wonderfully and soundly at night, not caring anymore.

- Tom Woods

http://lewrockwell.com/woods/woods239.html

[Snowtsuku]

I see. Though I have several problems because of my memory. Being able to remember something for so long has some kind of disadvantage as well. Anyway I read some of the quotes when I'm bored so I guess posting them here is a good thing.

[Metaler]

Nice selection, though make sure you don't rely on quotes too much.

[Guest]

on monopolies:

"The theory of natural monopoly is an economic fiction. No such thing as a 'natural' monopoly has ever existed. The history of the so-called public utility concept is that the late 19th and early 20th-century 'utilities' competed vigorously, and like all other industries, they did not like competition. They first secured government-sanctioned monopolies, and then, with the help of a few influential economists, they constructed an ex post facto rationalization for their monopoly power. ... The theory of natural monopoly is a 19th-century economic fiction that defends 19th-century (or 18th-century, in the case of the U.S. Postal Service) monopolistic privileges and has no useful place in the 21st-century American economy."

-- Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Source: June 14, 1995 at the CATO Institute conference examining the question Postal Service in the 21st Century: Time to Privatize?

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Thomas.DiLorenzo.Quote.A29E

"Let monopolies and all kinds and degrees of oppression be carefully guarded against."

-- Samuel Webster

(1813–1872) British founder of Webster's Brewery (Samuel Webster & Sons Ltd)

1777

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Samuel.Webster.Quote.757A

[Guest]

controlling the population:

"The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed."

—Adolf Hitler

[Guest]

Soft despotism (or self-despotism) gives people the illusion that they are in control, when in fact they have very little influence over their government.

Thus, After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

- Alexis de Tocqueville

Volume II, Book 4, Chapter 6 of Democracy in America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_in_America

[Guest]

US Declaration of Independence

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

- Preamble

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

[Guest]

Why worry about the billions. when you should be worrying about the trillions?

More missing money here http://www.masters-in-accounting.org/missing-money/

[Guest]

Forbes: The Fed's $16 Trillion Bailouts Under-Reported

http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/

"The audit of the Fed’s emergency lending programs was scarcely reported by mainstream media – albeit the results are undoubtedly newsworthy. It is the first audit of the Fed in United States history since its beginnings in 1913. The findings verify that over $16 trillion was allocated to corporations and banks internationally, purportedly for “financial assistance” during and after the 2008 fiscal crisis."

- Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillion-bailouts-under-reported/

^ the first partial audit of the US Federal Reserve found that they've used an under reported 16 trillion bailing out foreign banks.

16 trillion looks like this: $16,000,000,000,000

Or about $51612.90 per person living in the United States

[Guest]

On the constitution:

"There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid."

-- Alexander Hamilton

(1757-1804)

Source: The Federalist No. 78.

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Alexander.Hamilton.Quote.29C2

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority.

They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people

upon a majority of them to secure sober action and

a respect for the rights of the minority."

-- William Howard Taft

(1857-1930) 27th US President

Source: Veto Message, Arizona Enabling Act, 1911

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/William.Howard.Taft.Quote.A748

[Guest]

on propaganda:

"The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb.

This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses."

-- Albert Einstein

(1879-1955) Physicist and Professor, Nobel Prize 1921

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Albert.Einstein.Quote.58C0

"Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can

arrest the present tendency toward statism... A really efficient totalitarian

state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and

their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be

coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task

assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda,

newspaper editors and schoolteachers."

-- Aldous Huxley

(1894-1963) Author

Source: Forward to 'Brave New World', 1932

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Aldous.Huxley.Quote.D3C8

[Guest]

on natural right:

"Nay, all laws must fall, human societies that subsist by them be dissolved, and all innocent persons be exposed to the violence of the most wicked, if men might not justly defend themselves against injustice by their own natural right, when the ways prescribed by publick authority cannot be taken."

-- Algernon Sidney

(1622-1683) English statesman, writer, Whig leader

Source: Discourses Concerning Government 266-67 (1763)

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Algernon.Sidney.Quote.90A5

[Guest]

on political speech:

“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.”

- George Orwell

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/673583-the-further-a-society-drifts-from-truth-the-more-it

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

- George Orwell

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2341551-a-collection-of-essays

[Guest]

on central banking:

"...the increase in the assets of the Federal Reserve Banks from 143 Million dollars in 1913 to 45 Billion dollars in 1949 went directly to the private stockholders of the [Federal Reserve] banks."

-- Eustace Mullins

(1923-2010) American political writer, author, biographer

Source: 'The Federal Reserve Conspiracy' (1954)

http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Eustace.Mullins.Quote.4F9E