Frank Chodorov Quotes & Sayings
Enjoy the top 34 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Frank Chodorov.
Famous Quotes By Frank Chodorov
Posterity does not pay off anything of the national debt. Each administration adds to the debt left to it, and the promise of liquidation implied in every bond issue is a false promise. — Frank Chodorov
Just what part does the State play in production to warrant its rake-off? The State does not give; it merely takes. — Frank Chodorov
The only beneficiaries of income taxation are the politicians, for it not only gives them the means by which they can increase their emoluments, but it also enables them to improve their importance. The have-nots who support the politicians in the demand for income taxation do so only because they hate the haves; ... the sum of all the arguments for income taxation comes to political ambition and the sin of covetousness. — Frank Chodorov
We have but to remember man's natural tendency to satisfy his desires with the minimum of effort to realize how political power will be utilized. — Frank Chodorov
Income and inheritance taxes imply the denial of private property, and in that are different in principle from all other taxes. The government says to the citizen: Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide. — Frank Chodorov
The State acquires power ... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates. — Frank Chodorov
All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates. — Frank Chodorov
In America it is the so-called capitalist who is to blame for the fulfillment of Marx's prophecies. Beguiled by the state's siren song of special privilege, the capitalists have abandoned capitalism. — Frank Chodorov
Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims. — Frank Chodorov
The Constitution did not give Americans freedom; they had been free long before it was written, and when it was put up for ratification they eyed it suspiciously, lest it infringe their freedom. The Federalists, the advocates of ratification, went to great pains to assure the people that under the Constitution they would be just as free as they ever were. Madison, in particular, stressed the point that there would be no change in their personal status in the new setup, that the contemplated government would simply be the foreign department of the several states. The Constitution itself is a testimonial to the temper of the times, for it fashioned a government so restricted in its powers as to prevent any infraction of freedom; that was the reason for the famous "checks and balances." Any other kind of constitution could not have got by. — Frank Chodorov
Increasing the power of the state in response to the Soviet menace would not defeat socialism in Russia but bring it to the United States. — Frank Chodorov
With this definition of "evil" in mind, it is the purpose of this book to show that many laws and governmental practices are impregnated with it, and to trace this wholesale infringement of our rights to the power acquired by the federal government in 1913 to tax our incomes - the Sixteenth Amendment. That is the "root." Furthermore, proof will be offered to support the proposition that the "evil" has reached the point where the doctrine of natural rights has been all but abrogated in fact, if not in theory. As a consequence, the kind of government we are acquiring is distinctly different from that envisaged by the Founding Fathers; it is fast becoming a government that conceives itself to be the source of rights, which it gives and can recall at its own pleasure. The transformation is not yet complete, but it will be seen as we go along that completion is not far off - if nothing is done to prevent it. — Frank Chodorov
The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact. — Frank Chodorov
Private capitalism makes a steam engine; State capitalism makes pyramids. — Frank Chodorov
The real reason for withholding taxes is the unwillingness of workers to share their incomes with the government and the consequent difficulties of collection. To overcome this handicap, the government has simply impressed employers into its service as involuntary and unpaid tax collectors. It is a form of conscription. Disregarding the right of privacy, which is an essential of liberty, the government's agents may, under the law, invade the employer's office, demand his accounts, and punish him for any infraction which they believe he has committed; they can impound his property and inflict a penalty for not having collected taxes for the government. — Frank Chodorov
Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery. — Frank Chodorov
When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care. — Frank Chodorov
Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped. — Frank Chodorov
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so. — Frank Chodorov
The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them? — Frank Chodorov
The early American knew that freedom was nothing more than the absence of external restraint on behavior; the government could not give you freedom, it could only take it away. — Frank Chodorov
There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion. — Frank Chodorov
The State is not, as many political scientists would make it, an inanimate thing; it consists of people, human beings, each of whom operates under an inner compulsion to get the most out of life with the least expenditure of labor. — Frank Chodorov
The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as 'free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control. — Frank Chodorov
Men live by production, but the State lives by appropriation. While the haves and the have-nots struggle over the division of existing wealth, it is the business of the State to improve itself at the expense of both; it picks up the marbles while the boys are fighting. That has been the story of men in organized society since the beginning. That this lesson of history should have escaped the reformers of the nineteenth century, when the habit of freedom was still strong in America, can be easily understood; what is not easily explained is the acceptance of the doctrine of benevolent government in our day, when all the evidence to the contrary is before our eyes. — Frank Chodorov
The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913. — Frank Chodorov
The proposal to quit voting is basically revolutionary; it amounts to a shifting of power from one group to another, which is the essence of revolution. As soon as the nonvoting movement got up steam, the politicians would most assuredly start a counterrevolution. Measures to enforce voting would be instituted; fines would be imposed for violations, and prison sentences would be meted out to repeaters. — Frank Chodorov
The institution of taxation rests foursquare on the axiom that somebody must rule somebody else. — Frank Chodorov
If for no other reason, personal pride should prompt every governor and state legislator to take a secessionist attitude; they were not elected to be lackeys of the federal bureaucracy. — Frank Chodorov
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. — Frank Chodorov
We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this, that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment. — Frank Chodorov
Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution. — Frank Chodorov
When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you. — Frank Chodorov
It should be pointed out, however, that throughout the debate emphasis was placed on raising money only for the proper expense of government.3 None of the advocates of income taxation spoke of expanding the functions of government, and while the opposition mentioned "socialism" it seems doubtful that they had any idea of a New Deal. The American mind of the nineteenth century was incapable of comprehending paternalism, regulation, and control; it was too strongly rooted in the past for that. Even those who advocated the tax method of undermining private property were not aware of what they were doing, and would probably have stopped in their tracks if they could have foreseen the consequences of their proposal. It was not any urgency for Big Government - which they could not even have understood - that prompted them to advocate income taxation. It was simply an urgency to "soak the rich" - the very common sin of envy. — Frank Chodorov