Henry Hazlitt Quotes - Page 2

Diluting the money supply with paper is the moral equivalent of diluting the milk supply with water.

There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate, and who are outraged at the slightest suggestion of a critical re-examination of the subject. The political pressure for constant extension and increase of these benefits is almost irresistible.

The 'private sector' of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector; and the 'public sector' is, in fact, the coercive sector.

Government planning always involves compulsion.

There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.

When each of us is free to work out his own economic destiny, within the framework of the market economy, the institution of private property, and the general rule of law, we will all improve our economic condition much faster than when we are ordered around by bureaucrats.

The great merit of gold is precisely that it is scarce; that its quantity is limited by nature; that it is costly to discover, to mine, and to process; and that it cannot be created by political fiat or caprice.

The vital consideration of incentives is almost systematically overlooked in the proposals of agitators for more and bigger government welfare schemes. We should all be concerned about the plight of the poor and unfortunate. But the hard two-part question that any plan for relieving poverty must answer is: How can we mitigate the penalties of failure and misfortune without undermining the incentives to effort and success.

The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.'

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

The only real cure for poverty is production.

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

A vital function of the free market is to penalize inefficiency and misjudgment and to reward efficiency and good judgment. By distorting economic calculations and creating illusory profits, inflation will destroy this function.

Arbitrary government power is being multiplied daily by the now practically unchallenged assumption that wherever there is any problem of any kind to be solved, government is the agency to step in and solve it.

Government-to-government aid rests on socialistic assumptions and promotes socialism and stagnation, whereas private foreign investment rest on capitalist assumptions and promotes private enterprise and maximum economic growth.

Today is already the tomorrow which the bad economist yesterday urged us to ignore.

The times call for courage. The times call for hard work. But if the demands are high, it is because the stakes are even higher. They are nothing less than the future of human liberty, which means the future of civilization.

Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else.

Inflation is not only unnecessary for economic growth. As long as it exists it is the enemy of economic growth.

Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of so- called economists who in turn are full of schemes for getting something for nothing. They tell us that the government can spend and spend without taxing at all; that it can continue to pile up debt without ever paying it off, because "we owe it to ourselves."

Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man

Competition always tends to bring about the most economical and efficient method of production. Those who are most successful in this competition will acquire more capital to increase their production still further; those who are least successful will be forced out of the field. So capitalist production tends constantly to be drawn into the hands of the most efficient.

In a thousand fields the welfarists, statists, socialists, and interventionists are daily driving for more restrictions on individual liberty.

Inflation is a form of tax, a tax that we all collectively must pay.