Harry Browne Quotes

No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.

The principal purpose of the Democratic Party is to use the force of government to take property away from the people who earn it and give it to people who do not.

…sharing out of the goods of others is the theft under the banner of equality.

Jesus taught that we should give to the poor and support widows, but he never said that we should elect a government that would take money from our neighbor's hand and give it to the poor.

The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow’s hands.

What the government gives it must first take away.

An owner’s right to exclude others from his property is the means by which he can avoid “bads” from happening: events that will lower the value of his property. By means of an unceasing flood of redistributive legislation, the democratic state has worked relentlessly not only to strip its citizens of all arms (weapons) but also to strip domestic property owners of their right of exclusion, thereby robbing them of much of their personal and physical protection.

Globalization causes job and income losses in certain sectors which exact significant psychological tolls. The government, therefore, has a responsibility to channel help from the winners to the losers.

Voluntary exchange is more moral than forced redistribution.

If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

If philanthropy is not voluntary, it destroys liberty and justice. The law can give nothing that has not first been taken from its owner.

Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.

Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.

For government to give, it must first take away.

In the political language of today, people who want to keep what they have earned are said to be greedy, while those who wish to take their earnings from them and give it to others (who will vote for them in return) show compassion.

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Give your goods to the poor: Christ. Property is theft - as long as it's not mine: Marx .

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do - redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God.

The state, it cannot too often be repeated, does nothing, and can give nothing, which it does not take from somebody.

To discover the meaning of what is called "social justice" has been one of my chief preoccupations for more than 10 years. I have failed in this endeavour or rather, have reached the conclusion that, with reference to society of free men, the phrase has no meaning whatever.

Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them.

The welfare state may be well-intentioned, but it is a Ponzi scheme

The law can be an instrument of equalization only as it takes from some persons and gives to other persons. When the law does this, it is an instrument of plunder.

When you give false information you tend to restrict the freedom of choice to others.