Free Enterprise Quotes - Page 6

• With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.

  Milton Friedman

  Favors, Notable, Businessman

  Milton Friedman (1984). “The suicidal impulse of the business community”

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• A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

  Edward Abbey

  Business, Government, Self

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.21, RosettaBooks

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• There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Party, Government, Goal

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Economic freedom and interventionism: an anthology of articles and essays”

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• Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Life, Freedom, Business

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• In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.

  Jamsetji Tata

  Community, Purpose, Facts

  Speech by Mr Vivek Kamra, www.spd.org.sg. 2014.

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• Provided that societies stay mindful of the challenges that capitalism creates and never forget the paramount importance of inclusion and equal opportunity, we can and should celebrate the miracle of free enterprise-and the billions of souls it has helped free from desperate poverty.

  Dalai Lama

  Opportunity, Miracle, Challenges

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• Why is our free-enterprise system so strong?- Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities

  Lee Iacocca

  Strong, Past, Reality

  Lee Iacocca, William Novak (2011). “Iacocca: An Autobiography”, p.216, Bantam

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• Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation, not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology.

  Fred Upton

  Choices, Innovation, Needs

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• American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.

  Thomas Sowell

  Two, World, Prosperity

  Thomas Sowell (2013). “Controversial Essays”, p.120, Hoover Press

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• The True conservative seeks to protect the system of private property and free enterprise by correcting such injustices and inequalities as arise from it. The most serious threat to our institutions comes from those who refuse to face the need for change. Liberalism becomes the protection for the far-sighted conservative.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Needs, Faces, Serious

  Campaign address, Syracuse, N.Y., 29 Sept. 1936

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• Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Believe, Men, Principles

  "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went". Book by John Kenneth Galbraith. Chapter XXI, "Afterword," p. 312, 1975.

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• No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.

  Peter Drucker

  Government, Evil, Needs

  Peter F. Drucker (2011). “Landmarks of Tomorrow: A Report on the New”, p.178, Transaction Publishers

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• Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism.

  Ralph Nader

  Competition, Socialism, Figs

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• You can give your Social Security check to any organization, public or private, or to individuals. You can donate it to your favorite political party. You can give the funds to a student scholarship - for your grandchildren, for example - or to somebody who has a medical need. Or you can invest your government check in free enterprise.

  Mark Skousen

  Party, Grandchildren, Government

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• Let the rabbit of free enterprise out of its velveteen bag and too many people would have to be fired, too much idiocy exposed to the light of judgment or ridicule, too much vanity sacrificed to the fires of efficiency. Such a catastrophe obviously would threaten the American way of life, to say nothing of the belief in free markets.

  Lewis H. Lapham

  Light, Fire, Vanity

  Lewis H. Lapham (1989). “Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion”

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• To accept capitalism and Free Enterprise as articles of faith without agreeing that we must be free to consider whether what is offered is free and freeing is itself enslavement.

  Gerry Spence

  Accepting, Enterprise, Articles

  Gerry Spence (1999). “Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century”, p.121, Macmillan

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• Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact that the welfare of business rests upon the welfare of the consumers of a nation; that business or free enterprise will function in a democracy only so long as the democracy functions.

  Saul Alinsky

  Long, Democracy, Would Be

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• I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk-takers being rewarded. But I also believe that everybody should have a fair shot and everybody should do their fair share and everybody should play by the same rules, because that's how our economy's grown. That's how we built the world's greatest middle class.

  Barack Obama

  Believe, Self, Should Have

  "Exclusive: Expanding the Debate with Third-Party Candidates Jill Stein, Virgil Goode, Rocky Anderson". www.democracynow.org. October 17, 2012.

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• It's a fundamental aspect of the free enterprise system and economics: If there's no penalty associated with increased costs, why not lay on increased costs?

  John McCain

  Cost, Why Not, Fundamentals

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• So the Bush-Obama administration has taken a fiscal stance diametrically opposed to that of the patron saint of free enterprise. While escalating war in Afghanistan and maintaining over 850 military bases around the world, the administration has run up the national debt that Smith decried. By shifting the tax burden off property and off rent-seeking monopolies - above all, off the financial sector - this policy has raised America's cost of living and doing business, thereby undercutting its competitive power and running up larger and larger foreign debt.

  Michael Hudson

  Running, Military, War

  "Adam Smith Critiques the Deficit Reduction Commission". Personal website, michael-hudson.com. December 06, 2010.

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• We preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe.

  Nicholas von Hoffman

  Wisdom, Jobs, War

  Nicholas Von Hoffman (1970). “Left at the post”, Crown

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• Free enterprise is a natural result of the American form of government, which says in so many words that the more men do for themselves, the less government does for them, the better off we will all be.

  Felix Morley

  Wisdom, Men, Doe

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• What kind of competition is there in your body? Suppose your brain said ' I'm the most important organ, and the liver said 'I am, and I want to go in a free enterprise-system.'  You would rot away in a month, if every organ of your body, were out for itself.

  Jacque Fresco

  Competition, Brain, Important

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• Every system tries to get people to conform to support that system. That goes for communism, socialism, free enterprise, or any other civilization. If they don't demand loyalty, they can't keep their civilization together. So what they do is they teach things that would support an established system. We do not advocate an established system. TVP talks of an emergent system into state of change. So that we always prepare people for the next changes coming ahead. So that people will not cling to the past.

  Jacque Fresco

  Loyalty, Past, Civilization

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• There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system.

  Foster Friess

  Brother, Believe, President

  "Super PACs echo parodies" by Kenneth P. Vogel, www.politico.com. February 13, 2012.

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