Frank Chodorov Quotes

For government to give, it must first take away.

There is nothing government can give you that it hasn't taken from you in the first place.

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

Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it.

The revenue of the state is the state.

[D]ecade after decade, through taxes and regulations, governments at all levels took ever-increasing control over people's lives, wealth, and property. The control grew exponentially, decade after decade. The rationale was that the control was necessary -- for society, for the poor, for the nation, even for freedom itself. Americans continued living their life of the lie: they continued believing that the more control government exercised over their lives and property, the freer they became.

The State, it cannot be too often repeated, does nothing and can give nothing which it does not take from somebody. The Forgotten Man works and votes -generally he prays-but his chief business in life is to pay.

When you give government the power to control the money supply, it grows like a tumor until it extinguishes society itself.

Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another at the destruction of the principles of freedom, and we ought to challenge that concept.

Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft.

It isn't possible to give government just a little control over the economy and our lives. Once we cede that power to government, it uses the power to take more from us. That's why every year the government controls more of our lives.

One of the worst of errors would be the general admission of the proposition that a Government has no right to interfere for any purpose except for that of affording protection.

Successful economies in the modern world are not sheepish about the power and responsibility of the state.

Once the tentacles of redistributionism wrap themselves tightly around every part of the economy - and around our psyches - they can never be unwound.

Market fundamentalists recognize that the role of the state in the economy is always disruptive, inefficient, and generally has negative connotations. This leads them to believe that the market mechanism can take care of all the problems.

The statists want to control the economy.

I argue that one of the functions of a capitalist state is to defend capitalism from itself, to defend capitalism from the capitalists.

What the government gives it must first take away.

The New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor, and agriculture.

Free competition and the open market system as they were known in the old days, have lost their places in the system, and that the only substitute for them, in these modern times, is government regulation and control.

The power to tax is the power to govern.

To tax and be loved is not given man.

The state has an active role to play in ensuring that there is equilibrium between the constituent parts of the economy, the consumers and the producers.

Governments have nothing. They can't create anything, they never have. All they can do is steal from one group and give it to another

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it