Henry Hazlitt Quotes

Quotes about:

• The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others. Never under any circumstances admit that your own failure may be owing to your own weakness, or that the failure of anyone else may be due to his own defects - his laziness, incompetence, improvidence, or stupidity.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Success, Cheating, Freedom

  66 Copy quote

• If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Order, Credit

  53 Copy quote

• The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Giving, Firsts

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.70, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  16 Copy quote

• For every alleged benefit that the politicians confer upon us, they must necessarily deprive us of something else.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Benefits, Politician

  0 Copy quote

• The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Trouble, Envious, Advantage

  Henry Hazlitt, Hans F. Sennholz (1993). “The Wisdom of Henry Hazlitt”, Foundation for Economic Education

  19 Copy quote

• Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Income, Incentives

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.228, Crown Business

  39 Copy quote

• Government provided free tuition tends more and more to produce a uniform conformist education, with college faculties ultimately dependent for their jobs on the government, and so developing an economic interest in profession and teaching a statist, pro-government, and socialist ideology.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Jobs, Teaching, College

  17 Copy quote

• When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Citizens, Littles

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.228, Crown Business

  43 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Destiny, Law, Work Out

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.136, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Agency, Government, Arbitrary

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.183, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  3 Copy quote

• Government welfarism, with its ever-increasing army of pensioners and other beneficiaries, is fatally easy to launch and fatally easy to extend, but almost impossible to bring to a halt - and quite impossible politically to reverse, no matter how obvious and catastrophic its consequences become.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Army, Government, Matter

  8 Copy quote

• Contrary to age-old prejudices, the wealth of the rich is not the cause of the poverty of the poor, but helps to alleviate that poverty.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Age, Prejudice, Poverty

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  5 Copy quote

• The capitalist system has lifted mankind out of mass poverty. It is this system that in the last century, in the last generation, even in the last decade, has acceleratively been changing the face of the world, and has provided the masses of mankind with amenities that even kings did not possess or imagine a few generations ago.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Kings, Lasts, Poverty

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  7 Copy quote

• The superior freedom of the capitalist system, its superior justice, and its superior productivity are not three superiorities, but one. The justice follows from the freedom and the productivity follows from the freedom and the justice.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Justice, Three, Capitalist

  2 Copy quote

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Men, Study, Economics

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.11, Crown Business

  34 Copy quote

• The larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Taken, Political, Income

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.35, Crown Business

  33 Copy quote

• It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Men, Errors

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.14, Crown Business

  3 Copy quote

• Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'

  Henry Hazlitt

  School, Holiday, Mean

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Successful, Government

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.45, Crown Business

  27 Copy quote

• Precisely because the State has the monopoly of coercion it can be allowed the monopoly only of coercion. Only if the modern State can be held within a strictly limited agency of duties and powers can it be prevented from regimenting, conquering, and ultimately devouring the society which gave it birth.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Agency, Coercion, Birth

  16 Copy quote

• 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.'

  Henry Hazlitt

  Revenge, Coal, Revolution

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

  19 Copy quote

• We are so accustomed to the miracle of private enterprise that we habitually take it for granted. But how does private industry solve the incredibly complex problem of turning out tens of thousands of different goods and services in the proportions in which they are wanted by the public? ... It solves these problems through the institutions of private property, competition, the free market, and the existence of money - through the interrelations of supply and demand, costs and prices, profits and losses.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Loss, Miracle, Competition

  8 Copy quote

• We cannot distribute more wealth than is created. We cannot in the long run pay labor as a whole more than it produces.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Long, Pay

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.146, Crown Business

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Art, Liberty, Groups

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.13, Crown Business

  15 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Growth, Assumption

  10 Copy quote

Page 1 of 5

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin