Wolfgang Schauble Quotes

Within the Russian system, everything depends on the character of those few who hold full power in their hands. The position of the individual within present-day Russia has been described as follows: far-reaching economic security by sacrificing personal liberty.

It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.

The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.

But on the other hand government takes away a certain amount of liberty and in some countries it takes away all of liberty. And it will, everywhere, if people who fight government do not fight government any longer.

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean - power over people, power to the State.

If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.

The State did not own men so entirely, even when it could send them to the stake, as it sometimes does now where it can send them to the elementary school.

Churchill knew instinctively what was wrong with communism - that it repressed liberty; that it replaced individual discretion with state control; that it entailed the curtailment of democracy, and therefore that it was tyrannous.

In Fascism the State is not a night-watchman, only occupied with the personal safety of the citizens.

That is one of the characteristics of fascism, the idea that the state can provide all of the answers for everyone.

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind

Everything within the State. Nothing outside the State. Nothing against the State.

The modern state does not comprehend how anyone can be guided by something other than itself. In its eyes pluralism is treason.

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. ... In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.

If the believers in liberty wish the principles of liberty taught, let them never intrust that instruction to any government; for the nature of government is to become a thing apart, an institution existing for its own sake, preying upon the people, and teaching whatever will tend to keep it secure in its seat.

Socialism easily accepts despotism. It requires the strongest execution of power -- power sufficient to interfere with property.

A little government involvement is just as dangerous as a lot - because the first leads inevitably to the second.

[Socialistic] economic planning, regulation, and intervention pave the way to totalitarianism by building a power structure that will inevitably be seized by the most power-hungry and unscrupulous.

Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.

Socialism is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the object worship of the state.

A government is the most dangerous threat to man

Scratch an egalitarian, and you will inevitably find a statist.

We are living in a highly organized state of socialism. The state is all; the individual is of importance only as he contributes to the welfare of the state. His property is only his as the state does not need it. He must hold his life and his possessions at the call of the state.

As soon as people drop the reins on government, government will leash the people.