A Quote by L. Neil Smith

Government can only do two things: It can beat people up and kill them. Or it can threaten to do so. When it seems to be doing something else - for example, handing out money or, say, surplus cheese - what's actually going on is that something has been taken away from one set of individuals by deadly force or the threat of deadly force, a hefty middleman's fee deducted, and whatever is left thrown to peasants delighted to receive stolen goods.

L. Neil Smith

Quote Topics

Actually Away Beat Been Cheese Deadly Deadly Force Delighted Doing Else Example Fee For Example Force Going Goods Government Handing Individuals Left Money Only Out Peasants People Receive Say Seems Set Something Something Else Stolen Surplus Taken Them Things Threat Threaten Thrown Two Two Things Up Whatever

Quote Author

L. Neil Smith
American - Writer
Born: May 12, 1946

Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them.

Milton Friedman

The libertarian approach is a very symmetrical one: the non-aggression principle does not rule out force, but only the initiation of force. In other words, you are permitted to use force only in response to some else's use of force. If they do not use force you may not use force yourself. There is a symmetry here: force for force, but no force if no force was used.

Stephan Kinsella

There is no question that Darren Wilson caused the death of Michael Brown by shooting him, but the inquiry does not end there. The law authorizes a law enforcement officer to use deadly force in certain situations. The law allows all people to use deadly force to defend themselves in certain situations.

Robert P. McCulloch

Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from the failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so.

Byron White

But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.

John Knowles

People look at me in many ways. They've said, 'The guy has no regard for money.' That is not true. I have had regard for money. It depends on who's saying that. Some people worship money as something you've got to have piled up in a big pile somewhere. I've only thought about money in one way, and that is to do something with it. I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it. I don't even want the dividends from the stock in the studio, because the government's going to take it away. I'd rather have that in (the company) working.

Walt Disney

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

Richard Yates

No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.

Ayn Rand

The Internet is such a tough marketplace because everyone is a click away from going back to a cat photo, or going back to whatever else they were doing. You have to win them over, and do it quickly, and do it by making something people actually want.

Alexis Ohanian

[Individuals] have a right to defend themselves and recover by force what by unlawful force is taken from them.

John Locke

The one thing government has which we (you or I or any corporation) DON'T have, is the ability to use deadly force to accomplish its goals.

Neal Boortz

There's always going to be something from one season to the next that's going to be a challenge, that's going to have change, that's going to force people to step up, force different roles on people.

Jason McCourty

A restlessness has seized hold of many of us, a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing, or doing at least two things at once, or going to check some other medium. It's an anxiety about keeping up, about not being left out or getting behind.

Rebecca Solnit

I don't think I have something that's pronounceable as a philosophy. ... When it was fashionable to say, "May the Force be with you," I always said, "Force yourself." ... I'll say again then, "The Force is within you. Force yourself."

Harrison Ford

Sometimes it's not like I write very specific, it's more like I add an atmosphere almost to something that might have been quite awkward in my mind from the beginning. Something has happened and I want to force myself to think of it in a more positive way. And then I force myself to write something that convinces me that this is actually something pretty good or something that I learned something valuable from.