Every power you grant to a politician you like will eventually be used by someone you don't like, to do something you don't want.

As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose - that it may violate property instead of protecting it - then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder. Political questions will always be prejudicial, dominant, and all-absorbing. There will be fighting at the door of the Legislative Palace, and the struggle within will be no less furious.

[A] law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate...it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them. There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.

The state opens a road, builds a palace, repairs a street, digs a canal; with these projects it gives jobs to certain workers. That is what is seen. But it deprives certain other laborers of employment. That is what is not seen...In noting what the state is going to do with the millions of francs voted, do not neglect to note also what the taxpayers would have done - and can no longer do - with these same millions....On one, the figure of a busy worker, with this devise: What is seen; on the other, an unemployed worker, with this device: What is not seen.

What would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window?...This formula...contains a whole theory...which, unfortunately, underlies most of our economic institutions. Suppose that it will cost six francs to repair the damage...The glazier will come, do his job, receive six francs, congratulate himself, and bless in his heart the careless child. That is what is seen...But if, by way of deduction, you conclude, that it is good to break windows, that it helps to circular money, that it results in encouraging industry in general...that will never do!...It is not seen that , since our citizen has spent six francs for one thing, he will not be able to spend them for another...he would have replaced, for example, his worn-out shoes...if the window had not been broken, the shoe industry...would have received six francs’ worth of encouragement...we should understand that there is no benefit to industry in general or to national employment whether windows are broken or not broken...If the accident did not happen, we must conclude that society...has lost the value of the broken window.

Ah! although there is much suffering within your walls; although misery, despair, and perhaps starvation, may call forth more tears than your warmest charity can wipe away, it is probable, it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of government would infinitely multiply those sufferings, and would extend among you the evils which now reach but a small number of your citizens.

Within the context of governmental power, however, we are more worried about what people will do on their bad days than we are pleased about their behavior on the good days. A fine despot may do wonders for awhile: public roads may be constructed, the trains may run on time, and the Dow may reach three thousand. But a bad despot, or a good despot turned bad, has quite the opposite effect. Our concerns go beyond potholes, train delays, and the bear market. We worry about tyranny, terror, confiscation, segregation, imprisonment, and death. There is more to fear from the downside than there is to gain from the upside. It is not that all people will behave in irresponsible ways once they assume public office. It is enough that a few unprincipled people in high positions can wreak public havoc...We should set our presumption against the concentration of power in the hands of government.

EPSTEIN, PROFESSOR RICHARD A., The Mistakes of 1937, George Mason University Law Review, Winter 1988, pp. 5-6, cited in POWELL, JIM, FDR’s Folly, Chapter 18 (2003)

Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the hidden confiscation of wealth.

A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away.

The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it.

The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.

Practically everything in which the federal government has embroiled itself for the last several decades is in crisis – education, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, inflation and the dollar, welfare, government spending, the drug war, and, of course, foreign policy.

HORNBERGER, JACOB G.

I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.

The people starve because those above them eat too much tax-grain. That is the only reason why they starve. The people are difficult to keep in order because those above them interfere. That is the only reason why they are so difficult to keep in order.

Government, in its very essence, is opposed to all increase in knowledge. Its tendency is always towards permanence and against change...[T]he progress of humanity, far from being the result of government, has been made entirely without its aid and in the face if its constant and bitter opposition.

The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another.

We tried to provide more for the poor and produced more poor instead. We tried to remove the barriers to escape poverty, and inadvertently built a trap.

[Quoting Herbert Spencer], when State power is applied to social purposes, its action is invariably "slow, stupid, extravagant, unadaptive, corrupt and obstructive."

...with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle. Mayor Gaynor astonished the whole of New York when he pointed out to a correspondent who had been complaining about the inefficiency of the police, that any citizen has the right to arrest a malefactor and bring him before a magistrate...State exercise of that right through a police force had gone on so steadily that not only were citizens indisposed to exercise it, but probably not one in ten thousand knew he had it.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

[A]ll the economic evils popularly ascribed to capitalism were caused, necessitated, and made possible not by private enterprise, not by free trade on a free market, but by government intervention into the economy, by government controls, favors, subsidies, franchises, and special privileges.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

The list is endless: Canadian health care, European welfarism, Argentine Peronism, African post-colonial socialism, Cuban communism, and so on. Nowhere in the world has the socialist impulse produced an omelette. Everywhere, it yields the same: eggs beaten, fried, and scrambled. People worse off than before, impoverished and looking elsewhere for answers and escape. Economies ruined. Freedoms extinguished. Lives taken.

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly 'reforming' their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they're always busy 'reforming' is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times.

[W]ho can guard us against the State itself? No one.

Under economic freedom, only man's destructive instincts are curbed by law. All of his creative instincts are released and freed to work those wonders of which free men are capable. In the controlled society only the creativity of the few at the top can be utilized, and much of this creativity must be expended in maintaining control and in fending off rivals.

War is just one more big government program.

The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.