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Quotes about economics

133 quotes from 78 people

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Men did not make the earth… It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property… Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.
Thomas Paine1737–1809Agrarian Justice (1797), Agrarian Justice
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.
Laurence J. Peter1919–1990
Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh1921–2021In 1981, in reference to an economic recession, as quoted in “Long line of princely gaffes”, BBC News (1 March 2002).
- Work
When I say “capitalism,” I mean a full, pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism⁠—with a separation of state and economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.
Ayn Rand1905–1982The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
- Government
“Free competition enforced by law” is a grotesque contradiction in terms.
Ayn Rand1905–1982“Antitrust: The Rule of Unreason,” The Objectivist Newsletter (February 1962) p. 1
- Laws
Trust the people. This is the one irrefutable lesson of the entire postwar period contradicting the notion that rigid government controls are essential to economic development.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
There are no such things as limits to growth, because there are no limits on the human capacity for intelligence, imagination and wonder.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Remarks to the White House Conference on Small Business (15 August 1986)
One definition of an economist is somebody who sees something happen in practice and wonders if it will work in theory.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and ultimately human fulfillment, are created from the bottom up, not the government down. Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefitting from their success⁠—only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, progressive, and free.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation?
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004
We don’t have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven’t taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, 1982
Fascism was really the basis for the New Deal. It was Mussolini’s success in Italy, with his government-directed economy, that led the early New Dealers to say “But Mussolini keeps the trains running on time.”
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Time (17 May 1976)
- Government
Government doesn’t “intrude” on the “free market.” It creates the market.
Robert Reichborn 1946Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few (2015)
- Government