Taxes are muses to the pithy
In our fractious society, one of the few traditions that unite us is the annual ritual of tax preparation. Something in the American soul fuels a fierce resentment against governmental exactions and the process required to comply with them. Now that most of us have mailed off our 1040s (deadline today!), here, in the spirit of exhausted reflection, are some of the most notable quotations about taxation, drawn from the recently published Yale Book of Quotations.
” ‘Tis impossible to be sure of any thing but Death and Taxes.”
– Christopher Bullock, “The Cobler of Preston” (1716)
“To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.”
– Edmund Burke, speech on American taxation, April 19, 1774
“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances … that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.”
– Thomas Paine, “Progress on the Rubicon” (1787)
“Taxation without representation is tyranny.”
– Attributed to James Otis in a letter by John Adams to William Tudor, March 29, 1818
“The thing generally raised on city land is taxes.”
– Charles Dudley Warner, “My Summer in a Garden”(1870)
“The income tax is just. It simply intends to put the burdens of government justly upon the backs of the people.”
– William Jennings Bryan, speech at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, July 8, 1896
“What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin.”
– Mark Twain, notebooks, Dec. 30, 1902
“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the greatest quantity of feathers with the least amount of hissing.”
– Jean-Baptiste Colbert, attributed in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March 1919
“I don’t see why a man shouldn’t pay an inheritance tax. If a Country is good enough to pay taxes to while you are living, it’s good enough to pay in after you die. By the time you die you should be so used to paying taxes that it would just be almost second nature to you.”
– Will Rogers, “They’ve Got a New Dictionary at Ellis Island” (1926)
“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in his dissenting opinion in Compania General de Tabacos de Filipinas vs. Collector of Internal Revenue (1927)
“Why shouldn’t the American people take half my money from me? I took all of it from them.”
– Edward A. Filene, quoted in “The Coming of the New Deal” (1959)
The United States “should have a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose.”
– William E. Simon, quoted in Blueprints for Basic Tax Reform (1977)
– “Read my lips: No new taxes.”
George H.W. Bush, in his acceptance speech at Republican National Convention, New Orleans, Aug. 18, 1988