[When people] say 'let's do something about it,' they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you.

The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers.

Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery.

The early American knew that freedom was nothing more than the absence of external restraint on behavior; the government could not give you freedom, it could only take it away.

There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.

If for no other reason, personal pride should prompt every governor and state legislator to take a secessionist attitude; they were not elected to be lackeys of the federal bureaucracy.

The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

Private capitalism makes a steam engine; State capitalism makes pyramids.

Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped.

The writing begins when you've finished. Only then do you know what you're trying to say.

It is possible to live in San Francisco for $35 000 a year. Obviously that doesn't include food or lodging.

I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive... is money.

Charity, like the sun, brightens every object on which it shines.

While Mitt Romney was at Bain Capital, almost one out of every four companies they were involved with went bankrupt or went out of business.

You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here.

If you can't help people, then what is the point of being successful?

Eclecticism is the word. Like a jazz musician who creates his own style out of the styles around him, I play by ear.

My mother raised us to think that if we worked hard, and if we put our end of the bargain in, it would work out OK for us.