Wendell Berry on economics

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. … We have been wrong.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

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