Walter E. Williams Quotes

The nation's first experiment with the income tax was tried at this time; another violation of the Constitution.

The only one benefiting from this, the American taxpayer, almost half of our taxes, our income taxes, are going to the military and to these wars.

Your profits are going to be cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation. Your income will be subject to higher taxes. Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.

In reviewing the history of the English Government, its wars and its taxes, a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

Taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes.

The high income tax come pretty near passing in the Senate. Only lacked about six votes. So it won't be long now. Well, there is millions and millions that are not making it, that would be glad to give up 99 per cent if you would let 'em earn a hundred thousand or more.

Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when filling out an income tax form

Those days [of the Vietnam War] you couldn't get on a bus going to the South without expecting a riot over something or the other. All of that has disappeared thanks to Lyndon Johnson.

I think the Chinese will say the hell with you and pull their money out of the United States. That's the end of our wars.

Obama is now fighting for his life. He's fighting for a federal government. I believe in a federal government. I hope it sticks around. We had the American Revolution. There was this whole tension between the federalists and the anti-federalists. Then we had the Civil War. We had Lincoln fighting for it. And the secessionists were there. And we have the same issue today.

For some of us it seems like yesterday when Ike was in the White House, the U.S. Senate censured Joe McCarthy, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional.

The Grutter and Gratz decisions, taken together, represent a sad and tragic chapter in American history.

For war there is always enough. It's peace that's expensive.

Almost everywhere else in Europe, the more military the state, the stronger the king - except in Britain. Here it was parliament, not the monarchy, who signed the cheques. The longer the war went on, the stronger parliament became, as the purse on which it sat grew bigger and bigger.

As far as I know, we have never before decided to fight a war with borrowed money and ask generations that come after us to pay for it.

Ive never supported a payroll tax.

Going to war accelerated the move from indirect to direct rule. Almost any state that makes war finds that it cannot pay for the effort from its accumulated reserves and current revenues. Almost all war-making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat - including men - from reluctant citizens who have other uses for their resources.

My personal taxes are 53% of my taxable income. That's 36% on the federal level and 17% for state and local.

We're paying maybe 25 percent of the income tax, but the payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don't take that from me on capital gains. They don't take that from me on dividends.

The flat tax would be so simple, you could fill it out on a post card. A post card that would say, in effect, having a wonderful time; glad most of my money is here.

[I]f you look at United States history since World War II, you find that of the 10 presidents who preceded Barack Obama, seven left office with a debt ratio lower than when they came in. Who were the three exceptions? Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes.

Our financial ills will never be settled till you fix it so every man will pay an income tax on what he earns, be it a farm, grocery store or municipal or government bonds.

In every major war we have fought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Americans have been asked to pay higher taxes - and nonessential programs have been cut - to support the military effort. Yet during this Iraq war, taxes have been lowered and domestic spending has climbed. In contrast to World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam, for most Americans this conflict has entailed no economic sacrifice. The only people really sacrificing for this war are the troops and their families.

The United States, per capita, at a certain period in its history, had the most junkies of any country ever in the world - right after the Civil War. The most brutal war, the greatest amount of casualties that America's ever had.

The basic principle that we must follow in directing the armies of the Republic is this: that they must feed themselves on war at the expense of the enemy territory.