Henry Hazlitt Quotes

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• The future of human liberty ... means the future of civilization.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Mean, Civilization, Liberty

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Liberty, Essentials, Morality

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• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Political, Receiving

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.202, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Philosophy, Political, Employment

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.222, Crown Business

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• When your money is taken by a thief, you get nothing in return. When your money is taken through taxes to support needless bureaucrats, precisely the same situation exists. We are lucky, indeed, if the needless bureaucrats are mere easy-going loafers. They are more likely today to be energetic reformers busily discouraging and disrupting production.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Taken, Support, Thieves

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.69, Crown Business

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Political, Liberty, Libertarian

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.121, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. The richer and more copious one's vocabulary and the greater one's awareness of fine distinctions and subtle nuances of meaning, the more fertile and precise is likely to be one's thinking. Knowledge of things and knowledge of the words for them grow together. If you do not know the words, you can hardly know the thing.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Men, Thinking, Vocabulary

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

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• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Hard Work, Mean, Civilization

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

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• 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

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