“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.”
“Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”
“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
“I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.”
“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.”
“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”
"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both."
"Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist."
"With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves."
"Every friend of freedom... must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."
"The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933'"
"The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. . . . . . . Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system."
"The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them."
"I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. "
"There are four ways in which you can spend money.
- You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money.
- Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost.
- Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch!
- Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income."
"The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country."
"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. "
"I am a limited-government libertarian."
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
" The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
"The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."
"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes non-work."
"If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment."
"Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich."
"Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest. The benefits of a tariff are visible. [Union workers] can see they are "protected". The harm which a tariff does is invisible. It's spread widely. There are people that don't have jobs because of tariffs but they don't know it."
"I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal."
"It is because it's prohibited. See, 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."
"So long as large sums of money are involved — and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal — it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope."
"There is no logical basis for the prohibition of marijuana. $7.7 billion is a lot of money, but that is one of the lesser evils. Our failure to successfully enforce these laws is responsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Colombia. I haven't even included the harm to young people. It's absolutely disgraceful to think of picking up a 22-year-old for smoking pot. More disgraceful is the denial of marijuana for medical purposes."
