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130 Inspirational Quotes About Taxes In this world, nothing is certain

except death, taxes and "inspirational quote" posts on Inc.com

BY GEOFFREY JAMES, CONTRIBUTING EDITOR, INC.COM @SALES_SOURCE

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Taxes got you feeling blue? Don't despair! Here are a slew of famous (and not
so famous) quotes to make your tax season a bit less taxing. Enjoy!

1. Adam Smith: "Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of
opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable
 administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural
course of things."
2. Al Capone: "They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money."
3. Albert Bushnell Hart: "Taxation is the price which civilized communities pay
for the opportunity of remaining civilized."
4. Albert Camus: Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob
citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot
do without."
5. Albert Einstein: "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income
tax."
6. Alfred E. Neuman: "Today, it takes more brains and effort to make out the
income-tax form than it does to make the income."
7. Andrew Cuomo: "New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes
and low performance."
8. Anonymous: "A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for
doing something right."
9. Anonymous: "A person doesn't know how much he has to be thankful for
until he has to pay taxes on it."
10. Anonymous: "Of life's two certainties, the only one for which you can get an
automatic extension."
11. Anonymous: "People who complain about taxes can be divided into two
classes: men and women."
12. Anonymous: "The best things in life are free, but sooner or later the
government will find a way to tax them."
13. Arthur C. Clarke: "The best measure of a man's honesty isn't his income tax
return. It's the zero adjust on his bathroom scale."
14. Arthur Godfrey: "I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing
is, I could be just as proud for half the money."
15. Arthur Vanderbilt: "Taxes are the lifeblood of government and no taxpayer
should be permitted to escape the payment of his just share of the burden
of contributing thereto."
16. Austin O'Malley: "In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop
when you get down to the skin."
17. Barack Obama: "We've got a tax code that is encouraging flight of jobs and
outsourcing. And that's why we've specifically recommended ... that
Congress change our tax code so that we stop giving tax breaks to companies
that are moving to Mexico and China and other places, and start putting
those tax breaks into companies that are investing here in the United
States."
18. Barry Goldwater: "The income tax created more criminals than any other
single act of government."
19. Bauvard: "Every culture has some ritual for joining two people together and
making them stay that way, and ours is giving tax breaks."
20. Benjamin Franklin: "Friends and neighbors complain that taxes are indeed
very heavy, and if those laid on by the government were the only ones we
had to pay, we might the more easily discharge them; but we have many
others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are taxed twice as much
by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much
by our folly."
21. Benjamin Franklin: "Our new Constitution is now established, everything
seems to promise it will be durable; but, in this world, nothing is certain
except death and taxes."
22. Benjamin Tucker: "To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty
is indeed an addition of insult to injury."
23. Bill Archer: "We must care for each other more, and tax each other less."
24. Bob Dole: "The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it
belongs: in the hands of the working men and working women who earned
it in the first place."
25. Bob Thaves: "I don't know if I can live on my income or not--the government
won't let me try it."
26. Bonnie Raitt: Solar power is the last energy resource that isn't owned yet--
nobody taxes the sun yet."
27. Boris I. Bittker: "The layman is far more inclined than the expert to trust
paperwork as a shield against tax liability. Tax lawyers are bombarded at
cocktail parties with tax schemes, offered as proof positive of the speaker's
astute sophistication, that would not convince the most inexperienced
revenue agent or that teeter on the brink of fraud."
28. Calvin Coolidge: "Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is
legalized robbery."
29. Chris Rock: "You don't pay taxes--they take taxes."
30. Dan Bennett: "There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that
becoming taxpayers won't cure."
31. Dave Barry: "Congresspersons are too busy raising campaign money to read
the laws they pass. The laws are written by staff tax nerds who can put pretty
much any wording they want in there. I bet that if you actually read the
entire vastness of the U.S. Tax Code, you'd find at least one sex scene."
32. Dave Barry: "It's income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those
receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in
 the aorta."
33. David Frum: "The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich,
who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are
the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural
people. These are Republican constituencies."
34. David Mazzucchelli: "Yes: here's to the founding fathers--slave-owning British
citizens who didn't want to pay taxes..."
35. Edmund Burke: "To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is
not given to men."
36. Erving Goffman: "Man is not like other animals in the ways that are really
significant: animals have instincts, we have taxes."
37. Evan Esar: "Some taxpayers close their eyes, some stop their ears, some shut
their mouths, but all pay through the nose."
38. F.J. Raymond: "Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as
satisfying as an income tax refund."
39. Franklin D. Roosevelt: "Taxes are paid in the sweat of every man who labors."
40. Franklin P. Adams: "Count the day won when, turning on its axis, this earth
imposes no additional taxes."
41. Franklin Roosevelt: "Taxation according to income is the most effective
instrument yet devised to obtain just contribution from those best able to
bear it and to avoid placing onerous burdens upon the mass of our people."
42. Frederick the Great: "No government can exist without taxation. This money
must necessarily be levied on the people; and the grand art consists of
levying so as not to oppress."
43. George H.W. Bush: "Read my lips: no new taxes."
44. George Sutherland: "The legal right of a taxpayer to decrease the amount of
what otherwise would be his taxes, or altogether to avoid them, by means
which the law permits, cannot be doubted."
45. Gerald Barzan: "Taxation with representation ain't so hot either."
46. Grover Cleveland: "When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through
the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of
government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction
becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of
free government."
47. H.L. Mencken: "Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American
now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."
48. Ha-Joon Chang: "Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not
work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are--a
simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us
richer, as we were told."
49. Herman Wouk: "Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being
written today."
50. Holly Sklar: "Taxes are how we pool our money for public health and safety,
infrastructure, research, and services--from the development of vaccines and
the Internet to public schools and universities, transportation, courts,
police, parks, and safe drinking water."
51. Hugo Black: "The United States has a system of taxation by confession."
52. J.C. Watts: "Death and taxes may be inevitable, but they shouldn't be
related."
53. Jack Canfield: "I have lived by one crucial principle since I was 24 years old. I
don't blame or complain about things like the economy, the government,
 taxes, employees, gas prices, or any of the external things that I don't have
control over. The only thing I have control over is my response to these
things."
54. James M. Wayne: "The payment of taxes gives a right to protection."
55. James Madison: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the
Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of
benevolence, the money of their constituents."
56. Jean Baptist Colbert: "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as
to get the most feathers with the least hissing."
57. Jeff Foxworthy: "If your biggest tax deduction was bail money, you might be a
redneck."
58. John Andrew Holmes: "If the Lord loveth a cheerful giver, how he must hate
the taxpayer!"
59. John Marshall: "The power to tax is the power to destroy."
60. John Maynard Keynes: "The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit
that carries any reward."
61. John S. Coleman: "What the government gives it must first take away."
62. John Sherman: "We are told that this is an odious and unpopular tax. I never
knew a tax that was not odious and unpopular with the people who paid
it."
63. Joseph Bonkowski: "The best things in life are tax free."
64. Joyce Marcel: "For patriots like me, paying taxes gives a feeling of
responsibility, of being part of the fabric of our country, of contributing to
the common good."
65. Judith Martin: "The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you
identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have
 to pay taxes--naturally, no one wants to live any other way."
66. Lao Tzu: "The people are hungry: It is because those in authority eat up too
much in taxes."
67. Laurence J. Peter: "America is a land of taxation that was founded to avoid
taxation."
68. Laurence J. Peter: "Few of us ever test our powers of deduction, except when
filling out an income tax form."
69. Leon Panetta: "If we don't do something to simplify the tax system, we're
going to end up with a national police force of internal revenue agents."
70. Leona Helmsley: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."
71. Lord Bramwell: "Like mothers, taxes are often misunderstood, but seldom
forgotten."
72. Marco Rubio: "We don't need new taxes. We need new taxpayers, people that
are gainfully employed, making money and paying into the tax system."
73. Margaret Mitchell: "Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any
convenient time for any of them."
74. Mark Cuban: "While some people might find it distasteful to pay taxes, I
don't. I find it patriotic."
75. Mark Twain: "I shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and
taxes."
76. Mark Twain: "What is the difference between a taxidermist and a tax
collector? The taxidermist takes only your skin."
77. Martin A. Sullivan: "There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax
breaks only for some."
78. Martin D. Ginsburg: "There is an ancient belief that the gods love the obscure
and hate the obvious. Without benefit of divinity, modern men of similar
 persuasion draft provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 341 is
their triumph."
79. Max Baucus: "Tax complexity itself is a kind of tax."
80. Mignon McLaughlin: "Philosophy teaches a man that he can't take it with
him; taxes teach him he can't leave it behind either."
81. Milton Friedman: "Congress can raise taxes because it can persuade a sizable
fraction of the populace that somebody else will pay."
82. Milton Friedman: "We have a system that increasingly taxes work and
subsidizes nonwork."
83. Morgan Stanley: "You must pay taxes. But there's no law that says you gotta
leave a tip."
84. Nancie J. Carmody: "I am thankful for the taxes I pay because it means that
I'm employed."
85. Oliver Wendell Holmes: "Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a
regulation so far as it goes."
86. P. J. O'Rourke: In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is
government services. What I pay are my taxes.:
87. Paul Leroy_Beaulieu: "Taxes are simply contributions demanded of citizens as
their share of the expenses of government."
88. Paula Poundstone: "The wages of sin are death, but after they take the taxes
out, it's more like a tired feeling, really."
89. Peg Bracken: "Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars
and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?"
90. Plato: "When there is an income tax, the just man will pay more and the
unjust less on the same amount of income."
91. Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Of all debts, men are least willing to pay their taxes;
what a satire this is on government."
92. Randolph Paul: "Above all things, a tax attorney must be an indefatigable
skeptic; he must discount everything he hears and reads. The market place
abounds with unsound avoidance schemes which will not stand the test of
objective analysis and litigation."
93. Richard Carlson: "At tax time, it helps to remember that if your tax
obligation has increased from the previous year, it's usually because you're
enjoying more income. That's a situation to which most of us aspire. Higher
taxes are a price that we pay for greater success."
94. Richard Carlson: "Many people believe that where taxes are concerned, they
are victims, held hostage by an inevitable process that allows them no input,
no control. This passive approach becomes something of a self-fulfilling
prophecy; where people believe that they lack control, they seldom try to
assert control."
95. Rob Knauerhase: "Isn't it appropriate that the month of the tax begins with
April Fool's Day and ends with cries of 'May Day!'?"
96. Robert A. Heinlein: "There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for
what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for
him."
97. Robert Brault: "The IRS is an agency modeled after the revenue raising
concepts of the 19th century economist, Jesse James."
98. Robert Half: "People try to live within their income so they can afford to pay
taxes to a government that can't live within its income."
99. Robert Heinlein: "Be wary of strong drink. It can make you shoot at tax
collectors... and miss."
100. Robert Quillen: "Another difference between death and taxes is that you
don't have to work like fury to pay for the dying you did last year."
101. Roger Jones: "I guess I think of lotteries as a tax on the mathematically
challenged."
102. Ron Paul: "One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation
where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the
government."
103. Ron Paul: Income taxes are responsible for the transformation of the Federal
government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose
tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life."
104. Ronald Reagan: "The government's view of the economy could be summed
up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
105. Ronald Reagan: "The taxpayer--that's someone who works for the federal
government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination."
106. Ronald Reagan: "You can't tax business. Business doesn't pay taxes. It collects
taxes."
107. Russell B. Long: "A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it
benefits you, it is tax reform."
108. Snoopy: "Dear IRS, I am writing to you to cancel my subscription. Please
remove my name from your mailing list."
109. Stephen King: "The rope by which the great blocks of taxes are attached to
any citizenry is simple loyalty--loyalty to King, to country, to government."
110. Steve Forbes: "The flat tax would be so simple, you could fill it out on a post
card. A post card that would say, in effect, having a wonderful time; glad
most of my money is here."
111. Steve Forbes: "The politicians say 'we' can't afford a tax cut. Maybe we can't
afford the politicians."
112. Steven LaTourette: "Our tax code is so long it makes War and Peace seem
breezy."
113. Terri Guillemets: "I can give you 1040 good reasons we should improve our
government."
114. Thomas Jefferson: "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of
ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."
115. Thomas Paine: "Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses
for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none
to escape without tribute."
116. Thomas Paine: "What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of
revenue."
117. Thomas Paine: War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen
circumstances that no human wisdom can calculate the end; it has but one
thing certain, and that is to increase taxes."
118. Thomas Sowell: "Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay
our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage
politicians from being big spenders."
119. Vanya Cohen: "When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a
thousand thieves, it's taxation."
120. Walter B. Wriston: "All the Congress, all the accountants and tax lawyers, all
the judges, and a convention of wizards all cannot tell for sure what the
income tax law says."
121. Warren Buffett: "If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe
even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I
 think that people at the high end--people like myself--should be paying a lot
more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."
122. Will Rogers: "Alexander Hamilton started the U.S. Treasury with nothing
and that was the closest our country has ever been to being even."
123. Will Rogers: "Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying
for."
124. Will Rogers: "If you make any money, the government shoves you in the
creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can
keep."
125. Will Rogers: "The income tax has made more liars out of the American
people than golf has."
126. Will Rogers: "The only difference between death and taxes is that death
doesn't get worse every time Congress meets."
127. William Cobbett: "Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like
torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national
debt."
128. William Simon: "The nation should have a tax system that looks like
someone designed it on purpose."
129. Winston Churchill: "There is no such thing as a good tax."
130. Winston S. Churchill: "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into
prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by
the handle."

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APR 13, 2015

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