Joseph Sobran Quotes

71 quotes in 1292 categories

• Politicians never accuse you of 'greed' for wanting other people's money - only for wanting to keep your own money.
• The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can bestow on him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.
• We have been living amidst one of the great revolutions of human history, and we hardly know it: the penetration of the State into every…
• The chances of your being harmed by terrorists are mathematically minute. The chance of your being robbed by your own government? That's easy: 100 per…
• War is just one more big government program.
• The most fundamental purpose of government is defense, not empire.
• War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness…
• People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to…
• Voters who live off taxpayers are the Democrats' ace in the hole. The Democrats created big programs and never let the recipients forget it. This…
• The Constitution poses no threat to our current form of government.
• Anything called a "program" is unconstitutional.
• Since outright slavery has been discredited, "democracy" is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.
• Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they…
• The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a…
• Tyranny seldom announces itself...In fact, a tyranny may exist without an individual tyrant. A whole government, even a democratically elected one, may be tyrannical.
• The difference between a politician and a pickpocket is that a pickpocket doesn't always get indignant when you tell him to keep his hands to…
• Even if we are all doomed to live under the state, it doesn't follow that there is, or even can be, such a thing as…
• Thus does a 'necessary evil' become an idol. Maybe we're stuck with it. But do we have to worship it?
• There can be no such thing as "limited government," because there is no way to control an entity that in principle enjoys a monopoly of…
• By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum.…

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