Mark Skousen Quotes

Think about the kid-has-to-put-a-hockey-helmet-on-to-answer-the-phone society we live in now. Government is filled with people who come and tell you that everything you do is bad for you, bad for other people, insensitive, divisive, harms the climate, unsustainable, leaves too large a carbon footprint, tangles things in the tuna nets that shouldn’t be tangled in them. Whatever. They’ve always got some reason to tell you what to do. Government is just a form of bullying for weaklings. Politics is the art of achieving power and prestige without merit.

This modern mania for interfering in other's lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state.

My authoritarian and quick manner of making decisions led me to have serious problems and to be accused of being ultraconservative. I have never been a right-winger. It was my authoritarian way of making decisions that created problems.

We don't want a busybody government - a boss - that butts into our lives every chance it gets to tell us how to work, how to play, where to live and on and on.

Tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. 'Choice' is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

I don't care if you're a Republican or a Democrat, there is something profoundly un-American about using the brute force of government to bully someone.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

I have to tell you – you know, ObamaCare is really, I think, the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery. And it is, in a way – it is slavery, in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government.

Looking back now, I realise why, as prime minister of Malaysia, I was described as a dictator. There were many things I did which were typically dictatorial.

My view of Trump is that, while he has done some extremely noxious things, in general his worst feature, his most authoritarian feature, really is his public presentation.

Government has gotten too big, and it's infringed on our liberty and freedom.

When Barack Obama tries to continually weasel his ever-expanding government into the private sector or does something like try to sneak the biggest backdoor tax in history into the books, he ceases to be 'Presidential.'

I hate the endless admonishments of a nanny state that lives in fear of its lawyers. While colonies of dim-witted traffic wardens swarm about looking for minor parking infringements, nobody seems to notice that our very social fabric is falling apart.

Hillary Clinton is worried about how Trump is exploiting a divided nation? She's exploiting a divided nation. She and her leftist buddies, they're the ones dividing and then exploiting. They're the ones that are imposing their will on us, and it isn't happening democratically. They're just bullying everybody into shutting up so that the left doesn't come after 'em.

Of course, political leaders are much more ambitious than gangsters. The latter are content to take your money, whereas the former, besides taking far more of your money, have the effrontery to violate your just rights whenever their convenience dictates.

Government's power to bully people who have broken no law is dangerous to all of us.

National Health? Socialized pension funds? State-controlled television? Search and seizure laws? Forfeiture laws? If we're not living in the Soviet Union of the United States we certainly have returned to 1776 and 'taxation without representation.'

I'm getting a little tired of politicians trying to prove how 'moderate' and 'centrist' they are by taking more of my money and freedom. Where's this center - somewhere between Lenin and Stalin?

Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.

The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption — and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

A tyrant institutionalises stupidity, but he is the first servant of his own system and the first to be installed within it.

Going forward, my mind will be open to every solution - except one. We should not - we must not - and I will not - raise taxes.

Is there a point of taxation wherein even a Democrat would acknowledge it is thievery by the government?

We are witnessing a slow, steady takeover of our true freedoms. We are becoming a socialist nation, and whoever can't see this is probably hoping it isn't true. If we permit Mr. Obama to take over all our industries, if we permit him to raise our taxes to support unconstitutional causes, then we will be in default. This great America will become a paralyzed nation.

none can be Tyrants but Cowards.