Frank Chodorov quotes

When people say 'let's do something about it', they mean 'let's get hold of the political machinery so that we can do something to somebody else.' And that somebody is invariably you. (Frank Chodorov)
All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Popular suffrage is in itself no guarantee of freedom. People can vote themselves into slavery. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Perhaps the removal of trade restrictions throughout the world would do more for the cause of universal peace than can any political union of peoples separated by trade barriers. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The more subsidized it is, the less free it is. What is known as 'free education' is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; it is socialized education - just like socialized medicine or the socialized post office - and cannot possibly be separated from political control. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Income and inheritance taxes imply the denial of private property, and in that are different in principle from all other taxes. The government says to the citizen: "Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide. View quote
Frank Chodorov
There cannot be a good tax nor a just one; every tax rests its case on compulsion. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Taxation is nothing but organized robbery, and there the subject should be dropped. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The corruption of freedom is in proportion to the moral deterioration of the people. For a people who have lost their sense of self-respect have no need for freedom. And the income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Since the State thrives on what it expropriates, the general decline in production that it induces by its avarice foretells its own doom. Its source of income dries up. Thus, in pulling Society down it pulls itself down. Its ultimate collapse is usually occasioned by a disastrous war, but preceding that event is a history of increasing and discouraging levies on the marketplace, causing a decline in the aspirations, hopes, and self-esteem of its victims. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Society thrives on trade simply because trade makes specialization possible, and specialization increases output, and increased output reduces the cost in toil for the satisfactions men live by. That being so, the market place is a most humane institution. (Frank Chodorov)
When the individual is relieved of the obligation of self-respect, he acquires the habits of helplessness; he is inclined to retreat to the security of the prenatal state. The more he is taken care of the more he wants care. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Private Capitalism makes a steam engine; State Capitalism makes pyramids. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The State acquires power... and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them? View quote
Frank Chodorov
When the privacy of property is denied the privacy of conscience cannot be tolerated. Ideals which do not conform with the prescribed "social good" are obviously a threat to it and must be obliterated. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The right to own is the mark of a free man. The slave is a slave simply because he is denied that right. And because the free man is secure in the possession and enjoyment of what he produces, and the slave is not, the spur to production is in one and not in the other. View quote
Frank Chodorov
The State is that group of people who having got hold of the machinery of compulsion, legally or otherwise, use it to better their circumstances; that is, by use of the political means. (Frank Chodorov)
Communism, they will admit, is Socialism gone hog-wild, but they do not seem capable of recognizing this as an inevitable consequence. Their hatred of Communism does not make them individualists. This is not to question the sincerity of those who have hit the sawdust trail. Far from it. The individualist, who accepts as basic the right of every man to make a fool of himself-provided he does not infringe the equal rights of others-is quick to accept the repentance at face value. But, repentance is not conversion; there is reason to believe that conversion is impossible. View quote
Frank Chodorov
For, it must be kept in mind that individualism is the modern radicalism. In the true sense of the word, individualism is always radical, for it rests its case on root ideas; I delves into the nature of things for basic causes; it rejects the idea that man is best served by a series of expedients. View quote
Frank Chodorov
No sooner do men settle down to a given set of ideas, a pat-tern of living and of thinking, than fault-finding begins, and fault-finding is the tap-root of revolutions. View quote
Frank Chodorov
Dependence on the State became a virtue; dependence on oneself was derided as ‘rugged individualism. View quote
Frank Chodorov