Walter E. Williams Quotes

76 quotes in 1671 categories

• Minimum-wage laws are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of racists.
• Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do…
• Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right…
• Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom.
• The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary…
• Communism and socialism is [sic] seductive. It promises us that people will contribute according to ability and receive according to needs. Everybody is equal. Everybody…
• Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a…
• In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
• Nothing in our Constitution suggests that government is a grantor of rights. Instead, government is a protector of rights.
• How you make it in this world, for the most part, depends more on what you do as opposed to whether people like or dislike…
• What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their…
• However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our…
• If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something…
• If our country is to survive and prosper, we must summon the courage to condemn and reject the liberal agenda, and we had better do…
• Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in…
• The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against…
• Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty. We're working on a third generation which has little in…
• In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense…
• Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to…
• Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government…

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