Walter E. Williams Quotes

State and local government are more corrupt and less efficient than the federal government.

Chicago's been under the grip of the corrupt and broken political machine for as long as everybody's memory.

Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.

It's wrong for someone to confiscate your money, give it to someone else, and call that "compassion."

Government sponsors untold waste, criminality and inequality in every sphere of life it touches, giving little or nothing in return.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Taxpayers are burdened with so-called defense spending that is used not for defense, but to create or hold jobs in someone's congressional district, or to continue to pile up profits for an arms manufacturer.

Corporate power in the political process is a reality.... Why violate the law by bribing public officials when there are legal and more traditional methods of persuasion that are more effective? Among these methods are campaign contributions, advertising, lobbying, and government-business job exchanges.

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

The Governor has been as blind, deaf and dumb as Tammany Hall could wish him to be.

When a private citizen is robbed, a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the government is robbed, the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than they had before.

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.

Give politicians power and it certainly will be abused eventually - if not by today's politicians, then by their successors.

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.

Washington, of course, aside from being one of the most mismanaged, crime-ridden cities on the planet, is a place where 535 federal legislators and about 38,000 lobbyists work at confiscating and redistributing the incomes of the American people.

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.

The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can't get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods.

To watch the progress of such endeavors is the office of a free press. To give us early alarm and put us on our guard against encroachments of power. This then is a right of utmost importance, one for which, instead of yielding it up, we ought rather to spill our blood.

I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down.

A war, or any wild-goose chase, is, as the vulgar use the phrase, a lucky turn-up of patronage for the minister, whose chief merit is the art of keeping himself in place.

I love motion capture. I think it's the best thing, ever. It's wonderful. It gives you an incredible freedom to just play things out.

No matter how many pro-freedom politicians we elect to office, the only way to guarantee constitutional government is through an educated and activist public devoted to the ideals of liberty.

The greatest advantage I know of being thought a wit by the world is, that it gives one the greater freedom of playing the fool.

It's important that we share our experiences with other people. Your story will heal you and your story will heal somebody else. When you tell your story, you free yourself and give other people permission to acknowledge their own story

The best thing you can give someone is the freedom to make their own mind up - and then, if it's not working out 5 years later, you can give your opinion.