Voltaire on government

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

~ Voltaire (1764)

George Bernard Shaw on welfare

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

~ George Bernard Shaw

Tom DiLorenzo on the reason for government

The purpose of government is for those who run it to plunder those who do not.

~ Tom DiLorenzo

Lovers of liberty mourn the death of the great Walter Williams

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn.  Do you disagree?  Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?

~ Walter E. Williams, R.I.P.

Walter Williams
1936-2020

Kevin Duffy on looting and the welfare state

We've condoned looting for decades. It's called welfare. This is what the welfare state produced, a culture of victims. If you oppose the welfare state, well, "you're a racist!"

Conditioned by the welfare state and the envy, hatred and entitlement it promotes, looters make the system more efficient: they cut out the middleman.

~ Kevin Duffy, May 31, 2020

Gustave de Molinari on property

Private property is redundant.  Public property is an oxymoron.  All legit property is private.  If property isn't private it's stolen.

~ Gustave de Molinari

Joe Sobran on the politics of theft

Politics is the conspiracy of the unproductive but organized against the productive but unorganized.

~ Joe Sobran

Frédéric Bastiat on paving the way for plunder

When plunder has become a way of life for a group of people living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it, and a moral code that glorifies it.

~ Frédéric Bastiat

Frederic Bastiat on government theft

The state is the great fiction by which everybody tries to live at the expense of everyone else.

~ Frederic Bastiat

Henry Hazlitt on government theft

Government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn’t first take from somebody else.

~ Henry Hazlitt

Frederic Bastiat on government theft

If you and I can't steal from our neighbors, we don't have the moral right to ask our neighbor -- our government to do the same thing.

~ Frederic Bastiat

(This may be a paraphrase. Ron Paul quoted referred to this quote in an interview with Glenn Beck on December 18, 2007.)

Frederic Bastiat on legal plunder

But how is... legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals.

~ Frederic Bastiat