If the people are led to believe that scarce resources are best channeled in a direction that producers and consumers would not choose on their own, the result must necessarily be central planning.

Capitalism, and capitalism alone, has rescued the human race from degrading poverty, rampant sickness and early death.

Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.

If credit expansion, protectionism, and government spending were a path to prosperity, mankind would have long ago created heaven on earth.

Socialism crushes human rights, builds the state, impinges on the liberty of conscience, and breeds social, cultural, and economic degeneration.

There is nothing the state can do, and which society needs done, that cannot be done far better by the market.

The state always poses a greater threat to society than whatever problem it purports to solve.

It's not as if socialism is a new idea. It was tried in the 20th century. It produced economic stagnation and despair. In its purest form, it extinguished more than one hundred million people.

Pledge allegiance to your principles, your family, your faith, but don't be foolish enough to pledge allegiance to a gang of thieves.

American federalism was the embodiment of political tolerance and decentralization - the expression of the liberal conviction that society can manage itself and needs no central plan.

Libertarianism is a theory of politics that is so compelling that once you have absorbed it, it becomes the lens through which you end up understanding all economic and political events.

Lo esperado no sucede. Es lo inesperado lo que acontece.

I don't want my generals or my defense secretary or my national-security team to ever feel deploying weapons to kill people as routine or abstract, even if the targets are bad people.

My own father had died of Alzheimer's. George [Mitchell] had been also, I think, deeply moved by a similar tragedy.

Buy what thou hast no need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy necessities.

I became famous almost before I had a craft.

. . . for the most part the worst instructed, and the least knowing of any of their rank, I ever went amongst.

In geometric and physical applications, it always turns out that a quantity is characterized not only by its tensor order, but also by symmetry.

If history's any judge, you might have democratic leanings in a revolution but that doesn't necessarily mean that the revolution is going to end up with democratic results.

I will bear this pain for you,” he swore. “If one of us has to bleed, it will be me. It’ll always be me.

In principle, skeptics are neither closed-minded nor cynical. We are curious but cautious.