Forced Payment Quotes

It would be an instructive exercise for the skeptical reader to try to frame a definition of taxation which does not also include theft. Like the robber, the State demands money at the equivalent of gunpoint; if the taxpayer refuses to pay, his assets are seized by force, and if he should resist such depredation, he will be arrested or shot if he should continue to resist.

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue.

It is safest to shut up and pay, which is what I shall eventually do, though I shall hate having to sell the children.

When I meet a government which says to me, "Your money or your life," why should I be in haste to give it my money?

Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?

Those in power have made it so we have to pay simply to exist on the planet. We have to pay for a place to sleep, and we have to pay for food. If we don't, people with guns come and force us to pay. That's violent.

The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.

You don't pay taxes; they take them from your check. That's not a payment - that's a 'jack.

When people choose their occupations according to what the public wants and is willing to pay for, that is “greed,” but when the public is forced to pay for what the anointed want done, that is “public service.”

There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion.

It’s not that Monsanto is making money out of the blue. It’s making money by coercing and literally forcing people to pay for what was free. Take water, for instance. Water has always been free. We’ve never paid for drinking water. The World Bank says the reason water has been misused is because it was never commercially priced. But the reason it’s been misused is because it was wasted by the big users—industry, which polluted it.