QuoteProject
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
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Excessive taxation without necessity undermines freedom and promotes oppression.

Calvin Coolidge's quote highlights the dangers of a government that imposes taxes beyond what is necessary for the well-being of the public. He argues that such actions are not in service of liberty but rather contribute to a state of tyranny, where citizens become subservient to the government's demands instead of enjoying the freedoms granted by a fair and just system.

Themes

GovernmentTaxationLibertyTyrannyServitudePublic Policy

In practice

Example use cases

This quote can be used in a discussion about government policies and taxation.

More from Calvin Coolidge

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves.
Calvin CoolidgeRead
It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion. They are always surrounded by worshipers. They are constantly, and for the most part sincerely, assured of their greatness.
Calvin CoolidgeRead
America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.
Calvin CoolidgeRead
No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline.
Calvin CoolidgeRead
Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.
Calvin CoolidgeRead
The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.
Calvin CoolidgeRead

Similar quotes

To the haranguers of the populace among the ancients, succeed among the moderns your writers of political pamphlets and news-papers, and your coffee-house talkers.
Benjamin FranklinRead
I don't know a country in the world that doesn't have borders and doesn't want to know who is coming into their country.
John KennedyRead
Party honesty is party expediency.
Grover ClevelandRead
There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act.
Ryszard KapuscinskiRead
Over the course of history, governments, political regimes, and leaders have done some stupid things despite all arguments to the contrary, at times even against their own self-interest.
James CarvilleRead
Always, since our birth, we've insisted on another way of doing politics. Now, we had the chance to do it without arms, but without stopping being Zapatistas; that's why we keep the masks on.
Subcomandante MarcosRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.