Some Food for Thought on the Fourth of July

“Excessive taxation … will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election.”
--Thomas Jefferson

“The mode of taxation is, in fact, quite as important as the amount. As a small burden badly placed may distress a horse that could carry with ease a much larger one properly adjusted, so a people may be impoverished and their power of producing wealth destroyed by taxation, which, if levied in any other way, could be borne with ease.”
--19th century American Economist Henry George

“An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, the power to destroy.”
--Daniel Webster

“We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.”
--Winston Churchill

“A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude”
--Calvin Coolidge

“He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation... For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.... We, therefore... solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States. “
--The Declaration of Independence