Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. on economics

The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.

The main part of intellectual education is not the acquisition of facts but learning how to make facts live.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Alexander Hamilton1757–1804Letter to Robert Morris (30 April 1781)

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

Milton Friedman1912–2006Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15

• Business
• Freedom

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own neccessities but of their advantages.

Adam Smith1723–1790The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book I, Chapter II, p. 19.In context