Mike Lee Quotes

No animal on the face of the earth could conceive of taxation. You and I work roughly six months a year to pay our local, state and federal taxes. If nothing else, this should convince you that animals are smarter than people.

If the government can make money, what on earth does it collect taxes for you and me for? Why don't it make what money it wants, take the taxes out, and give the balance to us?

I've always considered the government taking one out of every two dollars I earn absolute tyranny.

Remember that government doesn't earn one single dollar it spends. In order for you to get money from the government, that money must first be taken from somebody else.

Every time we spend a federal dollar, what we're doing is we're pulling money out of somebody's pocket, and we're giving it to somebody else.

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces.

What the government gives it must first take away.

All taxes must, at last, fall upon agriculture.

I would rather see the objects of the war fail,—I would rather see the seamen of the country …. and our commerce swept away …, than see the long arm of the Treasury indirectly thrust into the pocket of the citizen through the penal law.

No government can exist without taxation.... This money must of necessity be levied on the people; and the grand art consists in levying so as not to oppress.

By the imposition of a variety of taxes, imposts, stamps, excises and other duties ...[would] squeeze from them [the citizens] the little money they may acquire ...

We want public services but we do not want to pay for them

The sales tax is a necessary source of revenue to pay for Japan's social welfare.

From the time they get up in the morning and flush the toilet, they're taxed. Then they go and get the cup of coffee, they're taxed....This goes on all day long. Tax, tax, tax.

Taxes are the source of life for the bureaucracy, the army and the court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.

Alexander Hamilton originated the put and take system in our national treasury: the taxpayers put it in, and the politicians take it out

The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Unlike every other person and institution in society, government obtains its revenue from coercion, from taxation.

Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want—and their kids pay for it.

Every dime spent is a political decision made.

Human laws are entirely destitute of the sanction of rewards. To confer honors for obedience would be as ridiculous as unavailing. The honor of many would resolve itself into the honor of none. To dispense pecuniary rewards would be nugatory or impracticable. In an unqualified extent, no government would be able to supply the funds; and even in a restricted form, its operation would be to receive money with one hand as a premium, and to pay it back with the other in the shape of a tax.

Wars cost money.

Taxes are not good things, but if you want services, somebody's got to pay for them, so they're a necessary evil

Money was the crux. Raising money to pay the cost of war was to cause more damage to 14th century society than the physical destruction of war itself.

… 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.