Opponents of repeal [of the Death Tax

Opponents of repeal [of the Death Tax] today should be as honest as the sponsors of the tax were in 1916, when the preamble to the bill creating it declared that the aim was ‘to break up the swollen fortunes of the rich.’ Of course, such rhetoric today would seem quaint, faintly risible, and even President Clinton would not risk using it.Today it’s more clear ‘swollen fortunes’ really enrich the entire country. Accumulations of capital provide the investments that create wealth for all, so we should abolish the inheritance tax. Thomas G. Dolan
Barron’s Sept 4, 2000

today should be as honest … ]

There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world’…

There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world’s mouth that it has come to seem to have sense and meaning — the sense and meaning implied when it is used — that is, the phrase which refers to this or that or the other nation as possibly being ‘capable of self-government’; and the implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, sometime or other which wasn’t capable of it — wasn’t as able to govern itself as some self-appointed specialists were or would be to govern it. Mark Twain
(Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835-1910), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its …

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual. Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826)