"You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money."

"The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it."

"I hate political correctness because it's founded on the idea that by means of language 
you can escape truth - that if you simply give a different name to something you've 
somehow changed it. It is a very childlike idea."

"To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze."

"A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them."

"Guns are always the best method for private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might just miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time."

"The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule."

"It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last."

"In comparative terms, there's no poverty in America by a long shot. Heritage Foundation political scientist Robert Rector has worked up figures showing that when the official U.S. measure of poverty was developed in 1963, a poor American family had an income twenty-nine times greater than the average per capita income in the rest of the world. An individual American could make more money than 93 percent of the other people on the planet and still be considered poor."

"The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you."

"It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money."

"Never Refuse Wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic."

"The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm."

"Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy."

Parliament of ###### (1991)

"No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn't test for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power."

"There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as caring and sensitive because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he is willing to do good with others people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head."

"Each American embassy comes with two permanent features - a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards."

"This country was founded by religious nuts with guns."

"Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, "getting in touch with your sexuality," "raising your self-esteem," "relaxation therapy," and "being a recovered bulimic."

The CEO of the Sofa, 2001

"The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it."

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators."

"Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise."

"Fishing ... is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait."

"It is easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people that it is often hard to tell the people and the cats apart."

"The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 - to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell."

Eat the Rich

"The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things-war and hunger and date rape-liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. . . . It's a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don't have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal."

"With money comes power over the world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Businesses can be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations pursued. But liberals aren't very interested in such real and material freedoms. They have a more innocent - not to say toddlerlike - idea of freedom. Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums. That liberals aren't enamored of real freedom may have something to do with responsibility - that cumbersome backpack which all free men have to lug on life's aerobic nature hike. The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors - psychology, sociology, women's studies - to prove that nothing is anybody's fauult. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion AND capital punishment."

"Politics should be limited in scope to war, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class."

"One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty in finding someone to blame your troubles on. And when you do find someone, it's remarkable how often their picture turns up on your driver's license."

"The question nowadays is not what makes government work. The question is how do we make it stop."

"...(I)f fairness is important, what is really fair? We may say something like, "People have a right to food, a right to housing, and a right to a good job for decent pay." But from an economist's perspective, all those rights involve making finite goods meet infinite wants. Unless the fair society generates tremendous economic growth--which societies that put fairness first have trouble doing--the goods will come from redistribution. Try rephrasing the rights statement thus: "People have a right to my food, a right to my housing, and a right to my good job for my decent pay."

"Going around the poor parts of the world shoving birth-control pills down people's throats, hustling them into abortion clinics, and giving them cheap prizes for getting sterilized is to assume that those people don't want babies as much as we do, that they won't like those babies as well as we like ours, and that little brown and yellow babies are not as good as the adorable pink, rich kind. American children grow up to be valuable citizens. Bangladeshi children grow up to be part of the world population problem. They just aren't giving birth to any Marky Marks or Howard Sterns in Dhaka."

All the Trouble in the World, p. 14

".......(T)he poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter."

All the Trouble in the World, p. 15

"Modern famine is either the result of deliberate political policies (the Ukraine in the 1930s, Sudan right now) or of terrible economic ideas (Ireland in the 1840s, China in the 1950s). To give food to the rulers of a famished country (as we did in Ethiopia) or to distribute food so that the rulers benefit from the distribution (as they did in Somalia) is simply to increase the power of the people who caused the famine. Then we are puzzled that our food donations don't stem world hunger."

All the Trouble in the World, p. 15

"You can't get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism."

"Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective."

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."