The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else. — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government can't give us anything without depriving us of something else. — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The essential function of the State is to maintain peace, justice, law, and order, and to protect the individual citizen against aggression,… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The only way government bureaucrats know of keeping prosperity going is to inflate some more - to increase the deficit or to… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
There are millions receiving government payments who have come to consider them as an earned right, who of course find them inadequate,… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
When any welfare scheme is being proposed, its political sponsors always dwell on what a generous and compassionate government should pay to… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government-to-government aid rests on socialistic assumptions and promotes socialism and stagnation, whereas private foreign investment rest on capitalist assumptions and promotes private… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government welfarism, with its ever-increasing army of pensioners and other beneficiaries, is fatally easy to launch and fatally easy to extend, but… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The proposal is frequently made that the government ought to assume the risks that are "too great for private industry." This means… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
New taxes are so unpopular that most 'social' handout schemes are originally enacted without enough increased taxation to pay for them. The… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
A Day never passes without some ardent reformer or group of reformers suggesting some new government intervention, some new statist scheme to… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
“Practically all government attempts to redistribute wealth and income tend to smother productive incentives and lead toward general impoverishment. It is the… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
There may have been somewhere, as a few eighteenth-century philosophers dreamed, a group of peaceful men who got together one evening after… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The vital consideration of incentives is almost systematically overlooked in the proposals of agitators for more and bigger government welfare schemes. We… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government relief tends constantly to get out of hand. And even when it is kept within reasonable bounds it tends to reduce… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The quickest and surest way to production, prosperity, and economic growth is through private enterprise. The best way for governments to encourage… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
There is a profound contrast between the effects of foreign aid and of voluntary private investment: foreign aid goes from government to… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Arbitrary government power is being multiplied daily by the now practically unchallenged assumption that wherever there is any problem of any kind… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The army of relief and other subsidy recipients will continue to grow, and the solvency of the government will become increasingly un… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government-to-government foreign aid promotes statism, centralized planning, socialism, dependence, pauperization, inefficiency, and waste. It prolongs the poverty it is designed to cure.… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for. The world is full of… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
..either immediately or ultimately every dollar of government spending must be raised through a dollar of taxation. Once we look at the… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The consequences of inflation are malinvestment, waste, a wanton redistribution of wealth and income, the growth of speculation and gambling, immorality and… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
The surest way for a poor nation to stay poor is to harass, hobble, and straitjacket private enterprise or to discourage or… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
More and more people are becoming aware that government has nothing to give them without first taking it away from somebody else-or… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
Government provided free tuition tends more and more to produce a uniform conformist education, with college faculties ultimately dependent for their jobs… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share Image
It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
“This is perhaps as good a place as any to point out that what distinguishes many reformers from those who cannot accept their proposals… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
“The analysis of our illustrations has taught us another incidental lesson. This is that, when we study the effects of various proposals, not merely… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
There is a profound contrast between the effects of foreign aid and of voluntary private investment: foreign aid goes from government to government. It… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
The mounting burden of taxation not only undermines individual incentives to increased work and earnings, but in a score of ways discourages capital accumulation… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
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… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
It is possible to increase paper-money income to any amount by debasing the currency. But real income can only be increased by working harder… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
“the desperate need to get back to normal housing and other living conditions stimulated increased efforts. But this does not mean that property destruction… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
Yet it ought to be clear that a minimum wage law is, at best, a limited weapon for combatting the evil of low wages,… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
“It is a misconception to think of the function or result of machines as primarily one of creating jobs . The real result of… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
A certain amount of taxes is of course indispensable to carry on essential government functions. Reasonable taxes for this purpose need not hurt production… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
A vital function of the free market is to penalize inefficiency and misjudgment and to reward efficiency and good judgment. By distorting economic calculations… — Henry Hazlitt Copy Share
