Alexander Hamilton on economics

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty.

Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.

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

Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.

G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Uses of Diversity