Historical Figures look at the Stimulus Bill

Given that the $800 Billion “Economic Stimulus Bill” is so controversial, as someone with a master’s degree in history, I naturally wondered what some of the great figure of history would have to say about the bill. So I asked them. Here are their responses.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. –Plato

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. --Thomas Jefferson

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him. –Charles DeGaulle

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them. --Frederick Douglass

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. --H.L. Mencken

Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made. --Otto Von Bismark

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury. From that time on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the results that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. Sir Alex Fraser Tytler (Editor’s note: I had a bad connection, so can’t be sure it was actually Sir Alex I was speaking with.)

We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds. --Andrejs Upits

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual). --Ayn Rand

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. --Thomas Jefferson

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy. --Theodore H. White

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity. --Irving Kristol

In a democracy the people get what the majority deserves. --James Davidson

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. --Ronald Reagan

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government. –Thomas Jefferson

Every time that we try to lift a problem from our own shoulders, and shift that problem to the hands of the government, to the same extent we are sacrificing the liberties of our people. --John F. Kennedy

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. --H.L. Mencken

The taxpayer: That's someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take the civil service examination. - Ronald Reagan

Were we directed from Washington when to sow, and when to reap, we should soon want bread. --Thomas Jefferson

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder. –Arnold Toynbee

The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters. --Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr

All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree." --James Madison

I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. --Thomas Jefferson

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. - Ronald Reagan

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand. --Milton Freidman

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money. --Margaret Thatcher

We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. --Thomas Jefferson

It is vain to do with more what can be done with less. --William of Occam

If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. --Thomas Jefferson

In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. –Oscar Wilde

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. Winston Churchill

I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground that ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, not longer susceptible of any definition. —Thomas Jefferson

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot. –George Orwell

Luxury ruins republics; poverty, monarchies. -- Charles De Montesquieu

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. --Thomas Jefferson

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.--George Bernard Shaw

Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. --Frederic Bastiat, French Economist

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. --Herbert Spencer, English Philosopher

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.--Edward Langley, Artist

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to state this or that or the other, but it is 'not done'... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. --George Orwell

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it. --Woodrow Wilson

A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. --Thomas Jefferson

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. --Judge Gideon J. Tucker, 1866

I 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. --Winston Churchill

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. ---Mark Twain

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. –Voltaire

Put not your trust in princes, nor in any human power, for there is no help in them. --Psalm 146.

There you have it folks. The ink is hardly dry, and the corrupt have hardly wet their beaks in the biggest boondoggle in history—but we already know what history thinks!