Walter E. Williams Quotes - Page 3

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• I believe our nation is at a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage where vows are broken, our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. These constitutional violations have increased independent of whether there's been a Democrat-controlled Washington or a Republican-controlled Washington.

  Walter E. Williams

  Believe, Independent, Rights

  Walter E. Williams (2015). “American Contempt for Liberty”, p.37, Hoover Institution Press

  71 Copy quote

• Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good.

  Walter E. Williams

  Littles, Politician, Economy

  10 Copy quote

• Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom.

  Walter E. Williams

  Liberty, Economic, Increase

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• School choice opponents are also dishonest when they speak of saving public schools. A Heritage Foundation survey found that 47 percent of House members and 51 percent of senators with school-age children enrolled them in private schools in 2001. Public school teachers enroll their children in private schools to a much greater extent than the general public, in some cities close to 50 percent.

  Walter E. Williams

  Teacher, Children, School

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• Minimum-wage laws are one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of racists.

  Walter E. Williams

  Powerful, Law, Liberty

  5 Copy quote

• Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers.

  Walter E. Williams

  Successful, Winning, Men

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• Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?

  Walter E. Williams

  People, World, Slavery

  5 Copy quote

• We might think of dollars as being 'certificates of performance.' The better I serve my fellow man, and the higher the value he places on that service, the more certificates of performance he gives me. The more certificates I earn, the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That's the morality of the market. In order for one to have a claim on what his fellow man produces, he must first serve him.

  Walter E. Williams

  Men, Thinking, Order

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• The greatest percentage of poverty is found in female-headed households. Over 70 percent of female-headed households are poor. A large percentage of poor people are children (17 percent); fully 85 percent of black children living in poverty reside in a female-headed household.

  Walter E. Williams

  Children, People, Black

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• All we have to do now is to inform the public that the payment of social security taxes is voluntary and watch the mass exodus.

  Walter E. Williams

  Money, Watches, Irs

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• Saying the Constitution is a living document is the same as saying we don't have a Constitution.

  Walter E. Williams

  Constitution, Documents

  Walter E. Williams (2013). “Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays”, p.236, Hoover Press

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• I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence.

  Walter E. Williams

  Kings, Law, People

  28 Copy quote

• I have nothing against rich people. In fact, I've been struggling most of my life to join them.

  Walter E. Williams

  Struggle, People, Facts

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• If the States do not have the right to secede, then they have no rights at all.

  Walter E. Williams

  Rights, Political, Revolution

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• Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.

  Walter E. Williams

  Giving, Office, Liberty

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• The message coming out of Washington, especially from our leftist politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress' appetite.

  Walter E. Williams

  Media, People, Insulting

  6 Copy quote

• Multiculturalists argue that different cultural values are morally equivalent. That's nonsense.

  Walter E. Williams

  Different, Arguing, Nonsense

  Walter E. Williams (2015). “American Contempt for Liberty”, p.338, Hoover Institution Press

  21 Copy quote

• Trying to get government to be as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow.

  Walter E. Williams

  Dog, Cat, Government

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• Universities have failed in their function of the pursuit of academic excellence by having dumbed down classes and granting degrees to students who are just barely literate and computationally incompetent.

  Walter E. Williams

  Academic Excellence, Class, Degrees

  12 Copy quote

• Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.

  Walter E. Williams

  Believe, Thinking, Government

  10 Copy quote

• Diversity worship and multiculturalism are currency and cause for celebration at just about any college. If one is black, brown, yellow or white, the prevailing thought is that he should take pride and celebrate that fact even though, just as in the case of my eye color, he had nothing to do with it. The multiculturist and diversity crowd see race as an achievement. In my book, race might be an achievement, worthy of considerable celebration, only if a person was born white and through his effort and diligence became black.

  Walter E. Williams

  Book, Eye, Pride

  6 Copy quote

• Socialism is just another form of tyranny.

  Walter E. Williams

  Socialism, Form, Tyranny

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• It was not until the Abraham Lincoln administration that an income tax was imposed on Americans. Its stated purpose was to finance the war, but it took until 1872 for it to be repealed. During the Grover Cleveland administration, Congress enacted the Income Tax Act of 1894. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 1895. It took the Sixteenth Amendment (1913) to make permanent what the Framers feared -- today's income tax.

  Walter E. Williams

  War, Cleveland, Income

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• Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?

  Walter E. Williams

  Powerful, Agency, Government

  39 Copy quote

• The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results.

  Walter E. Williams

  People, Results, Interest

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