Skip to content

[T]here is little doubt that only a totalitarian government aims to take on every possible concern of the citizenry.

— Tibor R. Machan Private Rights and Public Illusions (1994)

Another quote →

Topics

Government

More quotes by Tibor R. Machan

Without a market in which allocations can be made in obedience to the law of supply and demand, it is difficult or impossible to funnel resources with respect to actual human preferences and goals.

Ethics requires the kind of personal reflection, in the end, that no one else can do decisively for any individual.

The Promise of Liberty: A Non-Utopian Vision (2009)

The institution of taxation is not a civilized but a barbaric method to fund anything... it amounts to... a gross violation of human liberty.

If one behaved as a good citizen or a charitable person simply because one was dreadfully scared of the state placing one in jail, one would not be a good citizen or person but barely more than a circus animal.

Classical Individualism: The Supreme Importance of Each Human Being (1998)

Regulatory policies are inherently redistributive; that is, they involve the seizure of earned income for purposes of allocating this income in ways the government’s policymakers believe are more important than do those whose income has been seized.

Private Rights and Public Illusions (1994)

All Tibor R. Machan quotes →

You may also like

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Tibor R. Machan (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.