A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvements, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.
- Thomas Jefferson
in a letter to Andrew Jackson
Commerce and manufactures can seldom flourish long in any state which does not enjoy a regular administration of justice, in which the people do not feel themselves secure in the possession of their property, in which the faith of contracts is not supported by law, and in which the authority of the state is not supposed to be regularly employed in enforcing the payment of debts from all those who are able to pay. Commerce and manufactures, in short, can seldom flourish in any state in which there is not a certain degree of confidence in the justice of government.
- Adam Smith
Wealth of Nations
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
- P. J. O'Rourke
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
- Milton Friedman
Everyone wants to live at the expense of the state, they forget that the state lives at the expense of everyone.
- Frederic Bastiat
The tool of politics (which frequently becomes its objective) is to extract resources from the general taxpayer with minimum offense and to distribute the proceeds among innumerable claimants in such a way to maximize the support at the polls. Politics, so far as mobilizing support is concerned, represents the art of calculated cheating, or more precisely, how to cheat without being really caught.
- James R. Schlesinger
Systems Analysis and the Political Process. Journal of Law and Economics, (October 1968), p. 281.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
- Thomas Sowell
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
- Ronald Reagan
No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the congress is in session.
- Mark Twain
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