“What I fear most are affirmative actions of sober and well-intentioned men, granting to government powers to do something that appears to need doing.”
There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
— Robert Anson Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (1965)
Twain was speaking against the government's attempt to regulate Osteopahy...the osteopaths/chiropractors had hoped he was a believer, but it turned out he thought bone-adjustment was a sham, yet defending people being free to choose for themselves.
Now what I contend is that my body is my own, at least I have always so regarded it. If I do harm through my experimenting with it, it is I who suffer, not the state.
— Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), address to the New York General Assembly (1901)
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency.
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded.
Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
– General Douglas MacArthur, A Soldier Speaks: Public Papers and Speeches of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur (1965)
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
– P. J. O’Roarke, The Liberty Manifesto
Who Are the 47 Million Uninsured?
But Now You Know
Words of the Sentient 