The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

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When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.

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The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

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Society doesn't have values. People have values.

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The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.

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When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.

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If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

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You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

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The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

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Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.

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