Home / Topics / Economics Quotes

Economics Quotes

Browse 2895 quotes about Economics.

Economics Quotes

“The difference between [socialism and fascism] is superficial and purely formal, but it is significant psychologically: it brings the authoritarian nature of a planned economy crudely into the open. The main characteristic of socialism (and of communism) is public ownership of the means of production, and, therefore, the abolition of private property. The right to property is the right of use and disposal. Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal.”

“Unless the fundamental categories of economics such as 'property' were to be redefined in a radically personal way the liberal rationalist curse which had established economics as a scientific discipline cut off from human interests would proliferate. Economic models ... have failed to incorporate any meaningful index of individual benefit other than the original utilitarian one, ... the index of increasing income or an increasing flow of commodities.”

“[A] private property regime makes people responsible for their own actions in the realm of material goods. Such a system therefore ensures that people experience the consequences of their own acts. Property sets up fences, but it also surrounds us with mirrors, reflecting back upon us the consequences of our own behavior.”

People Action Materials Behavior Consequence Economics Responsible Mirrors Property Realms Goods Surround Regimes Fence Reflecting Private Property Reflecting Back

Author:Tom Bethell

“Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation.”

“The obsession with gold, actually and politically, occurs among those who regard economics as a branch of morality. Gold is solid, gold is durable, gold is rare, gold is even (in certain very peculiar circumstances) convertible. To believe in thrift, solidity and soundness is to believe in some way in the properties of gold.”

Way Believe Certain Money Circumstances Morality Economics Gold Regard Property Obsession Branches Peculiar Thrift Solidity Soundness

Author:Christopher Hitchens

“Men look on knowledge which they learn--or might learn--from others as they do on the most beautiful structures which are not their own: in outward objects, they would rather behold their own hogsty than their neighbor's palace; and in mental ones, would prefer one grain of knowledge gained by their own observation to all the wisdom of a thousand Solomons.”

Men Looks Might Beautiful Objects Thousand Economics Structure Property Neighbor Observation Grain Palaces Solomon Knowledge Gained

Author:Sarah Fielding

“Particularly when the war power is invoked to do things to the liberties of people, or to their property or economy that only indirectly affect conduct of the war and do not relate to the engagement of the war itself, the constitutional basis should be scrutinized with care. ... I would not be willing to hold that war powers may be indefinitely prolonged merely by keeping legally alive a state of war that had in fact ended. I cannot accept the argument that war powers last as long as the effects and consequences of war for if so they are permanent -- as permanent as the war debts.”

“And this exclusion of "women's work" continues, despite United Nations data gathered since 1975 (the beginning of the UN Decade for Women) indicating that women globally contribute two-thirds of the world's work hours, for which - given the imbalanced, unjust, and truly peculiar nature of the accounting characteristic of dominator economics - they globally earn only one-tenth of what men do and own a mere one-hundredth of the world's property.”

Men World Two Given Nations Hours United Economics Thirds Property Mere Decades Despite Data Characteristics Peculiar Dishes Unjust United Nations Accounting Exclusion

Author:Riane Eisler

“The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.”

Source: The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations

“The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.”

May Philosophy Political Politics Theory Economics Philosophical Property Sentences Communism Private Property Abolish One Sentence

Author:Karl Marx

“As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.”

Men Country Natural Land Produce Demand Economics Property Reap Private Property Property Rights Landlord Economic Inequality Real Property

Book:An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. With notes, and an additional vol., by D. Buchanan

Source: An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. With notes, and an additional vol., by D. Buchanan

“Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.”

Economics Property Inequality Affluence Wealth Of Nations

Book:The Wealth of Nations

Source: The Wealth of Nations

“The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.”

Important Liberty Economics Property Libertarian Private Property Property Rights Road To Serfdom

Author:Friedrich August von Hayek

“It is not true that the legislator has absolute power over our persons and property, since they pre-exist, and his work is only to secure them from injury. It is not true that the mission of the law is to regulate our consciences, our ideas, our will, our education, our sentiments, our works, our exchanges, our gifts, our enjoyments. Its mission is to prevent the rights of one from interfering with those of another, in any one of these things.”

Persons Ideas Law Liberty Rights Economic Conscience Economics Absolutes Property Missions Secure Enjoyment Injury Sentiments Interfere Legislators Absolute Power

Book:The Law

Source: The Law

“The foundation of any and every civilization, including our own, is private ownership of the means of production. Whoever wishes to criticize modern civilization, therefore, begins with private property.”

Mean Wish Liberty Economic Modern Civilization Economics Foundation Property Including Productions Criticize Ownership Private Property Modern Civilization

Book:The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism

Source: The free and prosperous commonwealth: an exposition of the ideas of classical liberalism

“It is true that the welfare-statists are not socialists, that they never advocated or intended the socialization of private property, that they want to 'preserve' private property-with government control of its use and disposal. But that is the fundamental characteristic of fascism.”

Want Use Government Liberty Economic Economics Fundamentals Property Preserves Welfare Characteristics Fascism Private Property Socialization

Book:Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Source: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

“No individual or private group or private organization has the legal power to initiate the use of physical force against other individuals or groups and to compel them to act against their own voluntary choice. Only a government holds that power. The nature of governmental action is: coercive action. The nature of political power is: the power to force obedience under threat of physical injury-the threat of property expropriation, imprisonment, or death.”

Source: Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

“Unlike the Marxists, the Nazis did not advocate public ownership of the means of production. They did demand that the government oversee and run the nation's economy. The issue of legal ownership is secondary; what counts is the issue of control. Private citizens, therefore, may continue to hold titles to property-so long as the state res...erves to itself the unqualified right to regulate the use of their property.”

May Mean Long States Use Government Running Nations Liberty Economy Issues Economic Citizens Demand Economics Property Productions Titles Ownership Nazi Marxist Unqualified

Author:Leonard Peikoff

“Three-fifths to two-thirds of the federal budget consists of taking property from one American and giving it to another. Were a private person to do the same thing, we'd call it theft. When government does it, we euphemistically call it income redistribution, but that's exactly what thieves do - redistribute income. Income redistribution not only betrays the founders' vision, it's a sin in the eyes of God.”

Giving Persons Doe Two Government Eye Three Sin Liberty Vision Economic Economics Thirds Property Income Budgets Betray Thieves Founders Theft Income Redistribution

Author:Walter E. Williams

“Government is necessary, but the only rights we can delegate to government are the ones we possess. For example, we all have a natural right to defend ourselves against predators. Since we possess that right, we can delegate authority to government to defend us. By contrast, we don't have a natural right to take the property of one person to give to another; therefore, we cannot legitimately delegate such authority to government.”

Giving Persons Government Natural Liberty Rights Economic Example Authority Economics Property Contrast Predator Delegates

Author:Walter E. Williams

“The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.”

People Liberty Rights Economic Commitment Economics Tests Agree Property Permit Disagree Private Property Property Rights

Book:More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well

Source: More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well

“Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft.”

“Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.”

Ifs Want Mean Use Wisdom Decision Knowledge Economy Resources Economics Property Efficiency Free Market Effectiveness Private Property Market Economy Free Market Capitalism Economy And Economics

Author:Milton Friedman

“No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or otherwise, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest shovel into his stores.”

Men Country Moral Economics Relation Property Stores Obligation Smallest Revenue Shovels

Author:James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde

“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government which impartially secures to every man whatever is his own.”

Source: Selected Writings of James Madison

“The slaves of socialism are slaves, but they are no one's property and therefore no one's loss.”

Philosophy Political Loss Economics Property Slave Socialism Eugenics

Book:The Government Against the Economy: The Story of the U.S. Government's On-going Destruction of the American Economic System Through Price Controls

Source: The Government Against the Economy: The Story of the U.S. Government's On-going Destruction of the American Economic System Through Price Controls

“Emergent properties result from interactions between individual parts, so it follows that a top down analytical approach that begins with the whole and dissects it into its constituent parts is bound to miss precisely those emergent properties”

Whole Individual Results Missing Approach Economics Property Bounds Interaction Constituents Top Down

Author:Manuel De Landa

“The close relationship between politics and economics is neither neutral nor coincidental. Large governments evolve through history in order to protect large accumulations of property and wealth.”

Government Political Order Wealth Protect Economics Property Evolve Accumulation Close Relationship Politics And Economics

Author:Michael Parenti

“I look in a right of property - on the right of individuals, to have and to own, for their own separate and selfish use and enjoyments, the produce of their own industry, with power freely to dispose of the whole of that in the manner most agreeable to themselves, as essential to the welfare and even to the continued existence of society.”

Looks Philosophy Whole Use Political Individual Existence Produce Industry Essentials Economics Property Selfish Welfare Enjoyment

Book:The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted. A Series of Letters Addressed, Without Permission, to H. Brougham, Esq., ... by the Author of

Source: The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted. A Series of Letters Addressed, Without Permission, to H. Brougham, Esq., ... by the Author of