Talk:Walter E. Williams

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Walter E. Williams. --Antiquary 18:10, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

• A thief is more moral than a congressman; when a thief steals your money, he doesn't demand you thank him.

• Creating false distinctions between human rights and property rights plays into the hands of Democrat and Republican Party socialists who seek to control our lives. If we buy into the notion that somehow property rights are less important, or are in conflict with, human or civil rights, we give the socialists a freer hand to attack our property.

• Once one accepts the principle of self-ownership, what's moral and immoral becomes self-evident. Murder is immoral because it violates private property. Rape and theft are also immoral -- they also violate private property. Here's an important question: Would rape become morally acceptable if Congress passed a law legalizing it? You say: "What's wrong with you, Williams? Rape is immoral plain and simple, no matter what Congress says or does!" If you take that position, isn't it just as immoral when Congress legalizes the taking of one person's earnings to give to another? Surely if a private person took money from one person and gave it to another, we'd deem it theft and, as such, immoral. Does the same act become moral when Congress takes people's money to give to farmers, airline companies or an impoverished family? No, it's still theft, but with an important difference: It's legal, and participants aren't jailed.

• Should the fact that if I become injured by not wearing a seatbelt or sick from eating and smoking too much, and become a burden on taxpayers, determine whether I'm free to not wear a seatbelt or puff cigarettes and gorge myself? Is there a problem with freedom? I say no, it's a problem of socialism. There is absolutely no moral case for government's taking another American's earnings, through taxes, to care for me for any reason whatsoever. Doing so is simply a slightly less offensive form of slavery. Keep in mind that the essence of slavery is the forceful use of one person to serve the purposes or benefit of another.

• The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.

• Move to the front of the class.
  • Various instances during speeches and writing after asking pivotal questions where the answer is implied in the question.

Don't know the Source

I've seen a quote from Mr. Williams in several places on the web: "Short of aerial bombardment, the best way to destroy a city is through rent control." I don't have a reliable source, just a number of partisan internet sites, such as the following:

http://www.spoa.com/pages/03rent-control.html

Does anyone know where to find the original source? If so I think it's a good quote to add.

The quote from Walter Williams is from John Stossel's video piece on rent control. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0h8kfA4i_A&t=241s)

The original is from Assar Lindbeck: "In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing." Assar Lindbeck, The Political Economy of the New Left (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); cited in Sven Rydenfelt, “The Rise, Fall and Revival of Swedish Rent Control,” in Rent Control: Myths and Realities, Walter Block and Edgar Olsen, eds. (Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1981), pp. 213, 230. Cagliost (talk) 15:21, 18 April 2015 (UTC)