Taxation Without Representation Quotes

When government gets too big, freedom is lost. Government is supposed to be the servant. But when a government can tax the people with no limit or restraint on what the government can take, then the government has become the master.

When your lordships look at the papers transmitted to us from America-- when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause … For myself I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation … that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion … no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the Congress at Philadelphia. I trust that it is obvious to your lordships, that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal.

It is supposed an undoubted right of Englishmen not to be taxed but by their own consent given through their representatives.

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation.

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.

The President in the late Executive proceedings in the relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both.

Our fathers waged a bloody conflict with England, because they were taxed without being represented .... They were not willing to be governed by laws which they had no voice in making; but this is the way in which women are governed in this Republic.

This [passing the Prohibitory Act] puts us in a complete war with America.

The American people want a balanced budget. They want Congress to stop this barbaric practice of perpetual deficit spending. It really, if you think about it, is a form of taxation without representation. We fought a war over that issue and we won that war.

It was just so in the American Revolution, in 1776, the first delicacy the men threw overboard in Boston harbor was the tea, woman's favorite beverage. The tobacco and whiskey, though heavily taxed, they clung to with the tenacity of the devil-fish.

The gentleman asks, When were the colonies emancipated? I desire to know when they were made slaves? The profit to Great Britain from the trade of her colonies, through all its branches, is two millions a year. This is the price that America pays you for your protection;

The ministers and people of England might neither mean to be, nor be, the tyrants and oppressors which they were thought by the people of America, but whether they were as reasonable and prudent, or even as well justified in their measures of taxation, much less of coercion, as they supposed, is quite another question.

Since first hearing the story as a child, any mention of the 'Boston Tea Party' has elicited in me an excitement that is uniquely American. When I heard rumblings that there was a new Tea Party, I got goose bumps. I love tea, I love parties, I hate taxes; I'm in! It seemed that most of America joined in my excitement!

Why should an atheist pay more taxes so that a church which he despises should pay no taxes? That's a fair question. How can the apologists for the church exemption answer it?

Before the American Revolution, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures had slight existence. British policies assaulted the privacy of dwellings and places of business, particularly when royal revenues were at stake.

When they wrote the Constitution, only white male landowners had the right to vote.

Could America exist without an income tax? The idea seems radical, yet in truth America did just fine without a federal income tax for the first 126 years of her history.

From present appearances there is no prospect of putting the late Coercive Acts in force but by first making a conquest of the New England Provinces.

One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.

While most Americans know about the Boston Tea Party, few are aware of the Liberty Tree and how important it was to fanning the flames of rebellion that led to the revolution in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence.

To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

I know of no power, indeed, of which a free people ought to be more jealous, than of that of levying taxes and duties.

The Founding Fathers realized that "the power to tax is the power to destroy," which is why they did not give the Federal government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say, the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give more than a third of their income to the Federal government.

Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor.

No Stamp Act, No Sedition Act, No Alien Bills, No Land Tax, downfall to the Tyrants of America; peace and retirement to the President; Long Live the Vice President.