David Brinkley Quotes

Tax policy is not about compassion.

I think that taxes have to exist. They should exist at the lowest possible level, and to the extent that we can, we shouldn't invent more. Maybe that's my experience being mayor of New York City, where we had so many taxes.

We want taxpayers, not tax wasters.

When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that the old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had one before.

It is my absolute intent to hold the line on taxes.

Taxes are always too high.

It seems idle to speculate in the abstract as to whether or not a progressive income tax schedule rising to rates in excess of 70 percent are justifiable …. The fact is that such rates cannot be successfully collected.

A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.

A tax code becomes an instrument of social policy.

You can't have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil.

That taxes may be the ostensible cause is true, but that they are the true cause is as far remote from truth as light from darkness.

Here's the problem if you keep raising tax rates: You slow down economic growth.

The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets.

We can fight over what the taxation levels should be, but the tax system should be very, very simple and not distortionary.

I think the tax cut is ridiculous but so am I.

Whoever is for higher taxes, feel free to pay higher taxes.

People like me, whose income largely comes from dividends, should pay more taxes. The problem is that taxes aren't used efficiently.

I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

There is no such thing as a good tax.

Every time you exempt a portion of the economy from taxation you put pressure on the rest of the economy.

Capital gains tax reduction is the ultimate now-nowism.

Rail against taxes of all kinds.

Those who pay no taxes, disposing by their votes of other people's money, have every motive to be lavish and none to economize.

What you don't want to have is tax-driven economic activity.