Quotes
Once again a selfish project - a collection of my favourite quotes, categorised by subject (this page is under construction):
Browse by Subject:
Politics, Government and Regulation
War, Welfare and Redistribution
Capitalism
"Is there some society you know that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? … The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you're talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it's exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system."
"But Capitalism doesn't reward virtue!"
"And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? … Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? … Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?" - Phil Donahue interviewing Milton Friedman: YouTube
"He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self- love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages." - Adam Smith: Wealth of Nations
"It is not labor legislation and labor-union pressure that have shortened hours of work and withdrawn married women and children from the factories; it is capitalism, which has made the wage earner so prosperous that he is able to buy more leisure time for himself and his dependents. The nineteenth centurys labor legislation by and large achieved nothing more than to provide a legal ratification for changes which the interplay of market factors had brought about previously." - Ludwig von Mises: Human Action
Central Banking
"True, governments can reduce the rate of interest in the short run. They can issue additional paper money. They can open the way to credit expansion by the banks. They can thus create an artificial boom and the appearance ofprosperity. But such a boom is bound to collapse soon or late and to bring about a depression." - Ludwig von Mises: Omnipotent Government
"If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of their currency, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson
"To the grumbler who complains about the unfairness of the market system only one piece of advice can be given: If you want to acquire wealth, then try to satisfy the public by offering them something that is cheaper or which they like better. Try to supersede Pinkapinka by mixing another beverage. Equality under the law gives you the power to challenge every millionaire. It is — in a market not sabotaged by government-imposed restrictions — exclusively your fault if you do not outstrip the chocolate king, the movie star and the boxing champion." - Ludwig von Mises
"The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another." - Milton Friedman
"The very terms 'efficient' and 'inefficient' are terms of normative and not positive economics, so much the better: immense confusion has been sown by the pretense that we can pronounce 'scientifically' on matters of 'efficiency' without committing ourselves to any value judgments." - Mark Blaug: The Methodology of Economics (2d ed.)
"The inverse relationship between quantity demanded and price is the core proposition in economic science, which embodies the presupposition that human choice behavior is sufficiently rational to allow predictions to be made. Just as no physicist would claim that "water runs uphill," no self-respecting economist would claim that increases in the minimum wage increase employment. Such a claim, if seriously advanced, becomes equivalent to a denial that there is even minimal scientific content in economics, and that, in consequence, economists can do nothing but write as advocates for ideological interests. Fortunately, only a handful of economists are willing to throw over the teaching of two centuries; we have not yet become a bevy of camp-following whores." - James Buchanan
"A dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant; and though it is, no doubt, extremely useful to him, it is as his clothes and household furniture are useful to him, which, however, makes a part of his expence, and not of his revenue. If it is to be let to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue which he derives either from labour, or stock, or land. Though a house, therefore, may yield a revenue to its proprietor, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to him, it cannot yield any to the public, nor serve in the function of a capital to it, and the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it. Clothes, and household furniture, in the same manner, sometimes yield a revenue, and thereby serve in the function of a capital to particular persons. In countries where masquerades are common, it is a trade to let out masquerade dresses for a night. Upholsterers frequently let furniture by the month or by the year. Undertakers let the furniture of funerals by the day and by the week. Many people let furnished houses, and get a rent, not only for the use of the house, but for that of the furniture. The revenue, however, which is derived from such things must always be ultimately drawn from some other source of revenue. Of all parts of the stock, either of an individual, or of a society, reserved for immediate consumption, what is laid out in houses is most slowly consumed. A stock of clothes may last several years: a stock of furniture half a century or a century: but a stock of houses, well built and properly taken care of, may last many centuries. Though the period of their total consumption, however, is more distant, they are still as really a stock reserved for immediate consumption as either clothes or household furniture." - Adam Smith
"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it." - Dr. Adrian Rogers
"Keynes did not add any new idea to the body of inflationist fallacies, a thousand times refuted by economists… He merely knew how to cloak the plea for inflation and credit expansion in the sophisticated terminology of mathematical economics." - Ludwig von Mises: Human Action
"Action is, by definition, always rational. One is unwarranted in calling goals of action irrational simply because they are not worth striving for from the point of view of ones own valuations." - Ludwig von Mises: Epistemological Problems of Economics
"No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempt to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future." - Ludwig von Mises: The Theory of Money and Credit
"If a man drinks wine and not water I cannot say he is acting irrationally. At most I can say that in his place I would not do so. But his pursuit of happiness is his own business, not mine." - Ludwig von Mises: Socialism
"The unpopularity of economics is the result of its analysis of the effects of privileges. It is impossible to invalidate the economists demonstration that all privileges hurt the interests of the rest of the nation or at least a great part of it." - Ludwig von Mises: Austrian Economics: An Anthology
"Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." - Adam Smith
"Appropriately thorough [economic] analysis should include an examination of the institutional structure itself in a predictive explanatory sense. The economist should not be content with postulating models and then working within such models. His task includes the derivation of the institutional order itself from the set of elementary behavioral hypotheses with which he commences. In this manner, genuine institutional economics becomes a significant and an important part of fundamental economic theory." - James M. Buchanan 1999[1968]: The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, p. 5.
"Everything is interconnected in the world of prices, so that the smallest change in one element is passed along the chain to millions of others." - Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov: The Turning Point
"A better approach would seem to be to start our analysis with a situation approximating that which actually exists, to examine the effects of a proposed policy change, and to attempt to decide whether the new situation would be, in total, better or worse than the original one. In this way, conclusions for policy would have some relevance to the actual situation." - Ronald Coase
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed." - Joseph Stalin
"What is wrong with the discipline that is nowadays taught in most universities under the misleading label of economics is not that the teachers and the authors of the textbooks are either not businessmen or failed in their business enterprises. The fault is with their ignorance of economics and with their inability to think logically." - Ludwig von Mises: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. The schools are not nurseries of progress and improvement, but conservatories of tradition and unvarying modes of thought." - Ludwig von Mises
"I've never let my school interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance." - Murray Rothbard
"Economic progress is the work of the savers, who accumulate capital, and of the entrepreneurs, who turn capital to new uses. The other members of society, of course, enjoy the advantages of progress, but they not only do not contribute anything to it; they even place obstacles in its way." - Ludwig von Mises: Epistemological Problems of Economics
"Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with the 130 IQ...Once you have ordinary intelligence, what you need is the temperament to control the urges that get other people into trouble when investing." - Warren Buffett
"I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life." - Mahatma Gandhi
"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit." - Milton Friedman
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
"All those not familiar with economics (i.e., the immense majority) do not see any reason why they should not coerce other people by means of force to do what these people are not prepared to do of their own accord." - Ludwig von Mises: Austrian Economics: An Anthology
"Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom." - Albert Einstein
"To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be... controlled in everything." - F.A. Hayek
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Acton
"The only business that tells you to reduce consumption of its product is a government regulated utility." - Murray Rothbard
"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it." -- Milton Friedman
"...monopoly and other imperfections are at least as important, and perhaps substantially more so, in the political sector as in the marketplace... Does the existence of market imperfections justify government intervention? The answer would be no, if the imperfections in government behavior were greater than those in the market." - Gary Becker: Competition and Democracy
"When competition is viewed as a dynamic, value-creating, evolutionary process, the role of economic rents in stimulating entrepreneurial decisions and in prompting an efficient allocation of resources is crucial…. [P]rofit seeking in a competitive market order is a normal feature of economic life. The returns of resource owners will be driven to normal levels … by competitive profit seeking as some resource owners earn positive rents which promote entry and others earn negative rents which cause exit. Profit seeking and economic rents are inherently related to the efficiency of the competitive market process. Such activities drive the competitive price system and create value (e.g., new products) in the economy." - Robert Tollison
"Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action. At any moment in time, by imposing uniform standards in housing, or nutrition, or clothing, government could undoubtedly improve the level of living of many individuals; by imposing uniform standards in schooling, road construction, or sanitation, central government could undoubtedly improve the level of performance in many local areas and perhaps even on the average of all communities. But in the process, government would replace progress by stagnation, it would substitute uniform mediocrity for the variety essential for that experimentation which can bring tomorrow's laggards above today's mean." - Milton Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom
"Libeal or individualist policy must be essentially long-run policy; the present fashion to concentrate on short-run effects, and to justify this by the argument that 'in the long run we are all dead,' leads inevitably to the reliance on orders adjusted to the particular circumstances of the moment in the place of rules couched in terms of typical situations." - F.A. Hayek
"The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess. The economic problem of society is thus not merely a problem of how to allocate “given” resources—if “given” is taken to mean given to a single mind which deliberately solves the problem set by these “data.” It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only these individuals know. Or, to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." - F.A. Hayek: The Use of Knowledge in Society
"The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder." - Adam Smith: Theory of Moral Sentiments (paragraph VI.II.42).
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." - F.A. Hayek: The Fatal Conceit
"The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it." - Adam Smith
"The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason." - Immanuel Kant
"Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank...To paraphrase Clemenceau: money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers." - Milton Friedman
"It is precisely those things which belong to "the people" which have historically been despoiled—wild creatures, the air, and waterways being notable examples. This goes to the heart of why property rights are socially important in the first place. Property rights mean self-interested monitors. No owned creatures are in danger of extinction. No owned forests are in danger of being leveled. No one kills the goose that lays the golden egg when it is his goose." - Thomas Sowell: Knowledge and Decisions
Politics, Government and Regulation
It is a standing topic of complaint, that a man knows too little of himself. Be it so: but is it so certain that the legislator must know more? It is plain, that of individuals the legislator can know nothing: concerning those points of conduct which depend upon the particular circumstances of each individual, it is plain, therefore, that he can determine nothing to advantage. - Jeremy Bentham
"As Adam Smith wrote over 200 years ago, in the economic market people who intend to serve only their own private interests are led by an invisible hand to serve public interests where there was no part of their intention to promote. In the political market, there is an invisible hand operating as well. But unfortunately it operates in the opposite direction. People who intend only to serve the public interest are led by an invisible hand to serve private interests that was not part of their intention to promote." - Milton Friedman: Free to Choose Part 10
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy." - Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn
"Do you know how to unite the people behind you, Child Carridin? The quickest way? Loose a lion - a rabid lion - in the streets. And when panic grips the people, once it has turned their bowels to water, calmly tell them you will deal with it. Then you kill it, and order them to hang the carcass up where everyone can see. Before they have time to think, you give another order, and it will be obeyed. And if you continue to give orders, they will continue to obey, for you will be the one who saved them, and who better to lead?" - Robert Jordan: The Dragon Reborn
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" - P.J. O'Rourke
"Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power. They must reluctantly admit that they are subject to the laws of nature. But they reject the very notion of economic law . . . economic history is a long record of government policies that failed because they were designed with a bold disregard for the laws of economics." - Ludwig von Mises: Austrian Economics: An Anthology
"No politician is any longer interested in the question whether a measure is fit to produce the ends aimed at. What alone counts for him is whether the majority of the voters favor or reject it." - Ludwig von Mises: The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
"State interference in economic life, which calls itself 'economic policy' has done nothing but destroy economic life." - Ludwig von Mises
"The three stages of government: If it works, tax it. If it still works, regulate it. If it stops working, subsidize it." - Ronald Reagan
"The two fundemental flawed beliefs about politicians is that they are dumb and that they mean well." - J.R. "Bob" Dobbs
"The difference between me and people like Murray Rothbard is that, though I want to know what my ideal is, I think I also have to be willing to discuss changes that are less than ideal so long as they point me in that direction." - Milton Friedman
"If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true." - Milton Friedman
"When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows, and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them." - Eric Hoffer: The True Believer
"There is no opinion, however absurd, which men will not readily embrace as soon as they can be brought to the conviction that it is generally adopted." - Schopenhauer
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions that differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Einstein
"Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions." - G. K. Chesterton
"The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it." - Joseph Goebbels
"I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." - Leo Tolstoy
"Majorities are no less exposed to error and frustration than kings and dictators. That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth." - Ludwig von Mises: Omnipotent Government
"To call a situation hopeless is equivalent to calling it ideal." - Frank Knight
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." - Milton Friedman
War, Welfare and Redistribution
"The interventionist policy provides thousands and thousands of people with safe, placid, and not too strenuous jobs at the expense of the rest of society." - Ludwig von Mises: Socialism
"The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave." - Lysander Spooner: No Treason No 6: The Constitution of Authority
"War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods." - Ludwig von Mises: Nation, State and Economy
"It is obviously futile to attempt to eliminate unemployment by embarking upon a program of public works that would otherwise not have been undertaken. The necessary resources for such projects must be withdrawn by taxes or loans from the application they would otherwise have found. Unemployment in one industry can, in this way, be mitigated only to the extent that it is increased in another." - Ludwig von Mises: Liberalism
"The only case that can be made on behalf of protective tariffs is this: the sacrifices they impose could be offset by other, noneconomic advantagesfor instance, from a national and military point of view it could be desirable to more or less isolate a country from the world." - Ludwig von Mises: A Critique of Interventionism
"See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs." - Dave Barry
"The hardest thing in the world to understand is income tax." - Albert Einstein
"The usual socialist disease: they have run out of other people's money." - Margaret Thatcher
"The task of weaning various people and groups from the national nipple will not be easy. The sound of whines, bawls, screams and invective will fill the air as the agony of withdrawal pangs finds voice." - Linda Bowles
"The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else." - Frédéric Bastiat
"The few who understand the system, will either be so interested from it's profits or so dependent on it's favors, that there will be no opposition from that class." - Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild