Rutherford B. Hayes on business

Let every man, every corporation, and especially let every village, town, and city, every county and State, get out of debt and keep out of debt. It is the debtor that is ruined by hard times.

Abolish plutocracy if you would abolish poverty. As millionaires increase, pauperism grows. The more millionaires, the more paupers.

Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.

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