Classic Political Quotes

In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a Congress.
-- John Adams (unverified)

If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.
-- Commonly attributed to Mark Twain

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself.
-- Mark Twain
Draft manuscript (c.1881), quoted by Albert Bigelow Paine in Mark Twain: A Biography (1912).

A nation trying to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to pull himself up by the handles.
-- Winston Churchill

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Everybody's Political What's What (1944) Ch. 30

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
-- G. Gordon Liddy (unverified)

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard, Civil Libertarian (1994) (unverified)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
-- Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University (unverified)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
-- P.J. O'Rourke, Civil Libertarian
Parliament of Whores (1991)

Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
-- Frederic Bastiat, French Economist (1801-1850)

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan (1986)
Remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business (1986-08-15)

I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts.
-- Will Rogers
As quoted in Saturday Review (25 August 1962)

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free!
-- P.J. O'Rourke
The Liberty Manifesto (1993)
Speech delivered May 6, 1993 for the opening of the Cato Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
-- Voltaire
"Money" (1770)

Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you!
-- Pericles (430 B.C.) (unsourced)

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
-- Mark Twain (1866) (unverified)

Talk is cheap...except when Congress does it.
-- Anonymous

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other.
-- Ronald Reagan
Joke during his 1965 campaign for Governor of California, as quoted in The New York Times Magazine (14 November 1965), p. 174

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
-- Winston Churchill (unsourced)

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
-- Mark Twain (unverified)

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

-- Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher (1820-1903)

Vol. 3, Ch. IX, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks

There is no distinctly native American criminal class--save Congress.
-- Mark Twain (unverified)

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
-- Edward Langley, Artist (1928-1995) (unverified)

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

-- Address by President Gerald Ford [ to the US Congress (12 August 1974)

The biggest difference between Republicans and Democrats is the spelling.
-- Anonymous