The Personal Website of Mark W. Dawson

My Favorite Quotes of Walter E. Williams

Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936 – December 2, 2020) was an American economist, commentator, and academic. As a black man raised in the ghetto of Philadelphia, PA, he provided keen insights into the political and economic issues confronting the minorities in America. His thoughts and commentaries were instrumental in the formulation of my ideas and political philosophy. The eulogies posted in The National Review do far more justice to him than I could ever hope to provide. I, and many other Americans, will sorely miss his perspectives on America.

Some of my favorite quotes of his are:

“A caged canary is safe but not free.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Communism and socialism is [sic] seductive. It promises us that people will contribute according to ability and receive according to needs. Everybody is equal. Everybody has a right to decent housing, decent food and affordable medical care. History should have taught us that when we hear people talk this stuff - watch out!”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Experts and the educated elite have replaced what worked with what sounded good. Society was far more civilized before they took over our schools, prisons, welfare programs, police departments and courts. It's high time we ran these people out of our lives and went back to common sense.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Here's Williams' roadmap out of poverty: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal; apartheid is legal; Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“I believe in helping our fellow man in need. I believe that reaching into your own pockets to help someone in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into somebody else's pockets to help your fellow man in need is despicable. And, or those of us who are Christians, I'm very sure that when God gave Moses the commandment Thou Shalt Not Steal, he did not mean ...unless you get a majority vote in Congress.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“I believe our nation is at a point where there are enough irreconcilable differences between those Americans who want to control other Americans and those Americans who want to be left alone that separation is the only peaceable alternative. Just as in a marriage where vows are broken, our rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution have been grossly violated by a government instituted to protect them. These constitutional violations have increased independent of whether there's been a Democrat-controlled Washington or a Republican-controlled Washington.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“I prefer a thief to a Congressman. A thief will take your money and be on his way, but a Congressman will stand there and bore you with the reasons why he took it.
 - Walter E. Williams

“I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“If you tax something you are going to get less of it, and if you spend something you are going to get more of it."
 - Walter E. Williams

“In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Increases in money supply are what constitute inflation, and a general rise in prices is the symptom.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Liberals believe government should take people's earnings to give to poor people. Conservatives disagree. They think government should confiscate people's earnings and give them to farmers and insolvent banks. The compelling issue to both conservatives and liberals is not whether it is legitimate for government to confiscate one's property to give to another, the debate is over the disposition of the pillage.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“More important than anything else is for Americans to wise up to class warfare demagoguery and reject the politics of envy.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Most of the great problems we face are caused by politicians creating solutions to problems they created in the first place.
 - Walter E. Williams

“No matter how worthy the cause, it is robbery, theft, and injustice to confiscate the property of one person and give it to another to whom it does not belong.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“People who denounce the free market and voluntary exchange, and are for control and coercion, believe they have more intelligence and superior wisdom to the masses. What's more, they believe they've been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Of course, they have what they consider good reasons for doing so, but every tyrant that has ever existed has had what he believed were good reasons for restricting the liberty of others.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Reduced employment opportunities is one effect of minimum wage legislation. The minimum wage law has imposed incalculable harm on the disadvantaged members of our society. The only moral thing to do is to repeal it.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“There are many farm handouts; but let's call them what they really are: a form of legalized theft. Essentially, a congressman tells his farm constituency, "Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you."”
 - Walter E. Williams

“There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do - redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions and a limited federal government?”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Trying to get government to be as efficient as business is as hopeless as trying to teach cats to bark and dogs to meow.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Wealth comes from successful individual efforts to please one's fellow man ... that's what competition is all about: "outpleasing" your competitors to win over the consumers.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.”
 - Walter E. Williams

“Whether we want to own up to it or not, the welfare state has done what Jim Crow, gross discrimination and poverty could not have done. It has contributed to the breakdown of the black family structure and has helped establish a set of values alien to traditional values of high moral standards, hard work and achievement.”
 - Walter E. Williams