Daniel Webster Quotes

The power to tax, once conceded, has no limits; it continues until it destroys.

We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one.

The power to tax is the power to govern.

The power to tax is the power to destroy.

The power to tax and spend is restricted by the enumerated powers.

The power to tax is not the power to destroy.

It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.

The power to tax involves the power to destroy;...the power to destroy may defeat and render useless the power to create.

If you increase the sales tax... everybody would be taxed.

Money is power, and in that government which pays all the public officers of the states will all political power be substantially concentrated.

Besides, we had a large debt, contracted at home and abroad in our War of Independence; therefore the great power of taxation was conferred upon this Government.

Congress have an unlimited power to raise money ... restricted only by the duty to appropriate it to the purpose of common defense and of general, not local; national, not State benefit.

No tax may be laid without the consent of the nation

The power of the purse is the only real power of government.

The power of taxing people and their property is essential to the very existence of government.

Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life.

The power of creating new funds upon new objects of taxation, by its own authority, would enable the national government to borrow as far as its necessities might require.

As the old saying goes, 'money is power' and the more money the government takes, the more power it has over individuals.

The true principle of taxation is the benefit principle - those who benefit from a government service should pay for it. It's also known as the 'user pay' principle. Every effort should be made to link the payment of taxes or fees to the cost associated with the government service.

There is something fundamentally unfair about a government that takes away so much of people's money, power, and personal control while telling them that life will be better as a result.

I lay this down as a fundamental proposition, which I do not think will be denied, that whoever controls the taxation and trade policy of a country controls its destiny and the entire character of its civilization.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power.

The income tax is the most regressive tax imaginable, allowing government to take first claim on our lives. The income tax assumes government owns us, as individuals, and has a sovereign claim to the fruits of our labor.

Arbitrary taxation is plunder authorized by law.