"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
— Robert A. Heinlein (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress)

"Certainty? In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."
— Benjamin Franklin

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."
— Winston S. Churchill

"The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin."
— Mark Twain

"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling.
"
— Paula Poundstone

"No nation has ever taxed itself into prosperity."
— Rush Limbaugh

"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 improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
— Thomas Jefferson

"I like to pay taxes. With them, I buy civilization."
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

"In Venezuela Chavez has made the co-ops a top political priority, giving them first refusal on government contracts and offering them economic incentives to trade with one another. By 2006, there were roughly 100,000 co-operatives in the country, employing more than 700,000 workers. Many are pieces of state infrastructure – toll booths, highway maintenance, health clinics – handed over to the communities to run. It’s a reverse of the logic of government outsourcing – rather than auctioning off pieces of the state to large corporations and losing democratic control, the people who use the resources are given the power to manage them, creating, at least in theory, both jobs and more responsive public services. Chavez’s many critics have derided these initiatives as handouts and unfair subsidies, of course. Yet in an era when Halliburton treats the U.S. government as its personal ATM for six years, withdraws upward of $20 billion in Iraq contracts alone, refuses to hire local workers either on the Gulf coast or in Iraq, then expresses its gratitude to U.S. taxpayers by moving its corporate headquarters to Dubai (with all the attendant tax and legal benefits), Chavez’s direct subsidies to regular people look significantly less radical."
— Naomi Klein

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy--to be followed by a dictatorship."
— Lord Woodhouselee

"Just tell 'em you're gonna soak the fat boys and forget the rest of the tax stuff...Willie, make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em mad, even mad at you. Stir them up and they'll love it and come back for more, but, for heaven's sakes, don't try to improve their minds. "
— Robert Penn Warren (All the King's Men)

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The power to tax is the power to destroy."
— John Marshall

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the
government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
— Thomas Jefferson

"John McCain’s plan to balance the budget by 2013 may have just taken the prize for Most Ridicule Sustained in a 24-Hour Period. (Before that, McCain's and Clinton’s gas-tax holiday proposals held the title.) The biggest gripe: It’s hard to see how McCain would sustain the Bush tax cuts, which the CBO estimates would create a $443 billion deficit by 2013, and still find room for his estimated $300 billion in additional tax proposals while also eliminating the deficit."
— Christopher Beam

"[Justice George Sutherland said, in the majority opinion for the Carter Coal case] 'One who does a thing in order to avoid a monetary penalty does not agree; he yields to compulsion precisely the same as though he did so to avoid a term in jail.'"
— Jim Powell

"[Justice Owen Roberts, writing the majority opinion for the Agricultural Adjustment Act, said] 'A tax, in the general understanding of the term, and as used in the Constitution, signifies an exaction for the support of the Government. The word never has been thought to connote the expropriation of money from one group for the benefit of another.'"
— Jim Powellll

"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical."
— Thomas Jefferson

"Let your voice be heard, whether or not it is to the taste of every
jack-in-office who may be obstructing the traffic. By all means, render unto
Caesar that which is Caesar's -- but this does not necessarily include
everything that he says is his."
— Denis Johnston

"They tax when you earn a dollar, they tax you when you save it, they tax you when you invest it. If you earn a dividend, they tax it again, and if you're stupid enough to die, they steal up to half."
— Grover Norquist president of Americans for Tax Reform