Quotations

 

The degree to which we deviate from economic truth and follow the plans of men is the degree to which we become enslaved and tyrannized by craftier men.

 

    — Unknown

 

 

I always get a chuckle out of the presumably unintentional irony of those who reject the anti-evolution idea of intelligent design in biology but simultaneously advocate what is, in effect, intelligent design economics.

 

    — Steve Conover

 

 

There are no causes of poverty. To ask what causes poverty is like asking what causes cold...it is the absence of energy. Similarly poverty is the absence of wealth. We should ask, “what are the causes of wealth?”

 

    — Madsen Pirie

 

 

Free people can treat each other justly, but they can't make life fair. To get rid of the unfairness among individuals, you have to exercise power over them. The more fairness you want, the more power you need. Thus, all dreams of fairness become dreams of tyranny in the end.

 

    — Andrew Klavan

 

 

In the whole history of capitalism, no one has been able to establish a coercive monopoly by means of competition in a free market...Every single coercive monopoly that exists or ever has existed...was created and made possible only by an act of government...which granted special privileges (not obtainable in a free market) to a man or a group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field.

 

    — Nathaniel Branden

 

 

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. 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 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 the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.

    — Adrian Rogers, 1931

 

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

 

    — Thomas Jefferson