Adam Smith Quotes

The British people overwhelmingly favour big businesses and the wealthiest individuals contributing their fair share so we can invest in our schools, hospitals and services.

If you make - not have - $1 million a year, should you not participate in the sense of community of our country? I'm willing to put that on the table.

The middle class has no more to give. The poor have nothing. Let's get it from those who've got it.

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

I don’t have anything against the rich. I just want some of their money to pay for essential services.

The wealthiest can afford to pay more in taxes. That's a part of the deal. That makes sense. I don't know anyone that doesn't agree with that.

I do believe that billionaires and multi-millionaires should be paying more in taxes.

Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.

When President Obama speaks about raising taxes on the rich, he speaks about high-income employees and small business owners, not entrepreneurs who build big businesses.

So tonight I propose one more step that I would rather not propose. I ask the most fortunate among us, those citizens earning over $100,000 per year, for one year, to pay an additional one percent on the income they receive.

If we're not going to tax the rich anymore, we're going to create class warfare.

Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more because they have benefitted more.

The generosity of the super-rich is sometimes proffered as evidence they're contributing as much to the nation's well-being as they did decades ago when they paid a much larger share of their earnings in taxes.

Everyone wants the rich to pay more in taxes.

You know what isn't class warfare? Progressive taxation, as in, say, expecting billionaires to pay at least as much in taxes as their secretaries. Ideally, in fact, they should pay more.

Sadly, this is the same old Republican story of Robin Hood in reverse - tax cuts for the rich while programs for average and low income Americans suffer.

I recognize that Republicans see a moral difference between a dollar taken away from a millionaire in government benefits and a dollar taken away from a millionaire in taxes.

Governments, of course, can - and do - soak the rich.

I will not accept a new wave of fiscal retrenchment, of belt-tightening, without asking people at the top to make their contribution, to make an additional contribution. I don't think you can ask people on middle and low incomes, who, after all, are the vast majority of the British population, to bear the brunt of this adjustment.

I know that we can pay for it because we are going to make the millionaires pay for it.

Why don't we go all the way and simple take the rich off the tax rolls altogether?

Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.

While lawmakers should eschew soaking the rich, that is no excuse for soaking the poor.

We demand a graduated income tax.

In this time of need, the people who can afford it, those making more than $1 million a year, should not pay a tax rate that is less than their secretary pays. This is not class envy. This is not class warfare. This is basic arithmetic.