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

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Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters' own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.

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You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.

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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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If capitalism worked as the socialists think an economic system ought to work, and provided a constant equality of living conditions for all, regardless of whether a man was able or not, resourceful or not, diligent or not, thrifty or not, if capitalism put no premiums on resourcefulness and effort and not penalty on idleness or vice, it would produce only an equality of destitution.

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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

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What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.

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If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment.

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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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