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

  75 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

  58 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

  21 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

  47 Copy quote

• The crying need today is not for more laws, but for fewer. The world must be saved from its saviors. If the friends of liberty and law could have only one slogan it should be: Stop the remedies!

  Henry Hazlitt

  Law, Liberty, Needs

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.216, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  7 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

  23 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

  43 Copy quote

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Water, Paper, Milk

  Henry Hazlitt (1965). “What You Should Know about Inflation”, p.132, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  3 Copy quote

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Pay, Form, Taxes

  13 Copy quote

• The only real cure for poverty is production.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Real, Poverty, Cures

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.95, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  6 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

  20 Copy quote

• Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Employment, Economy, Inflation

  5 Copy quote

• Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are cause and effect, they feed on each other!

  Henry Hazlitt

  Causes, Facts, Chaos

  15 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

  33 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Creating, Rewards, Judgment

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.133, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  16 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”

  8 Copy quote

• No matter whether it is their intention or not, almost anything that the rich can legally do tends to help the poor. The spending of the rich gives employment to the poor. But the saving of the rich, and their investment of these savings in the means of production, gives just as much employment, and in addition makes that employment constantly more productive and more highly paid, while it also constantly increases and cheapens the production of necessities and amenities for the masses.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Mean, Giving, Saving

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

  7 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”

  22 Copy quote

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

  Henry Hazlitt

  Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

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

  14 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

  11 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

  36 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  15 Copy quote

• 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

  22 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

  11 Copy quote

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