Henry George Quotes

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

What the government gives it must first take away.

For government to give, it must first take away.

The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.

The government and its chiefs do not have the powers of the mythical Santa Claus. They cannot spend except by taking out of the pockets of some people for the benefit of others.

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

Just what part does the State play in production to warrant its rake-off? The State does not give; it merely takes.

The best way to understand this whole issue is to look at what the government does: it takes money from some people, keeps a bunch of it, and gives the rest to other people.

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.

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.

Government has no resources of its own. Government can only give to us what it has previously taken from us.

The welfare state is the oldest con game in the world. First you take people's money away quietly, and then you give some of it back to them flamboyantly.

I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire.

The central issue of our time - of all times - is the size, power and scope of government.

Left-wing politicians take away your liberty in the name of children and of fighting poverty, while right-wing politicians do it in the name of family values and fighting drugs. Either way, government gets bigger and you become less free.

Government just simply can't do everything for everyone.

Government can’t deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

A government role in our society should be inherently suspect …. There is something inherently coercive in the nature of government.

… every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called), puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will.

Government can only spend a dollar to help someone when it forcibly takes a dollar from someone else.

You get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you.

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.

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.

The truth is that the government cannot give if it does not take from somebody...It is not in the power of the government to make everybody more prosperous.