These People Had Something to Say About Taxes

If you find yourself muttering about taxes this time of year, you're not alone. The subject of taxes has inspired many famous (and not so famous) quotes...

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1. "Taxation without representation is tyranny."
--Attributed to: James Otis (1725-1783), U.S. politician. As "No taxation without representation," this became the principal slogan of the American Revolution.

2. "There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people."
--Adam Smith (1723-1790), British philosopher and economist. Wealth of Nations (1776).

3. "In this world nothing can be said to be certain but death and taxes."
--Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), U.S. statesman and scientist. Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy (November 13, 1789).

4. "The avoidance of taxes is the only pursuit that still carries any reward."
--Attributed to: John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British economist.

5. "It has made more liars out of the American people than golf."
--Will Rogers (1879-1935), U.S. actor and humorist. Referring to income tax.

6. "The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax."
--Attributed to: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born U.S. physicist.

7. "They can't collect legal taxes from illegal money."
--Al Capone (1899-1947), Italian-born U.S. gangster, 1930. Objecting to the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue claiming large sums in unpaid back tax.

8. "Death and taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them!"
--Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949), U.S. novelist. Gone with the Wind (1936)

9. "The taxpayer is someone who works for the federal government but doesn't have to take a civil service examination."
--Attributed to: Ronald Reagan (1911- ), U.S. motion-picture actor and president.

10. "The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no, and they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them, read my lips: no new taxes."
--George H. W. Bush (1924- ), U.S. president. Acceptance speech, Republican Party Convention, New Orleans (August 18, 1988).

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