William S. Burroughs on business

Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can’t fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.

A functioning police state needs no police.

The business of America is business.

Calvin Coolidge1872–1933Speech to the Society of American Newspaper Editors (1925).

• America

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913), Appendix A

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

• Economics
• Freedom