Laissez Faire Capitalism Quotes

Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur for an ever expanding democratic way of life. ~ Saul Alinsky

The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat. ~ George Soros

Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin. Together, they must battle state coercion, whether called State Capitalism or State Socialism. The point is, "left" vs. "right" is a red herring. The reddest and perhaps most misleading red herring in all political-economic theory. ~ Walter Block

There is only one party in the United States: the Property party ... and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. ~ Gore Vidal

The billionaire investor George Soros has coined a term to describe this perspective: "free market fundamentalism." It is the belief not simply that free markets are the best way to run an economic system, but that free markets are the only way that will not ultimately destroy our other freedoms. "The doctrine of laissez-faire capitalism holds that the common good is best served by the uninhibited pursuit of self-interest,"36 Soros wrote. ~ Naomi Oreskes

(Ayn Rand was the godmother of laissez faire capitalism, the Virgin Mary of Libertarianism. She died in 1982. She spent her life attempting to turn selfishness into a religion so that people could claim their greed was grounded in the nature of man. Her heinous ideas and crappy books have given politicians philosophical cover to promote their "greed is good" agenda for decades. ~ Ian Gurvitz

Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism - with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church. ~ Ayn Rand

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. ~ Rose Wilder Lane

no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.46 Laissez-faire, ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity. ~ Christian Smith

The criminal excesses of unlimited capitalistic liberty had soon been checked thanks to the unlimited liberty of the press. ~ Salvador De Madariaga

Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith. ~ Francois Quesnay

Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things. ~ George F. Will

In a laissez-faire society, there could exist no public institution with the power to forcefully protect people from themselves. From other people (criminals), yes. From one's own self, no. ~ Karl Hess

Broadly speaking, the Southern and Western desert and mountain states will vote for the candidate who endorses an aggressive military, a role for religion in public life, laissez-faire economic policies, private ownership of guns and relaxed conditions for using them, less regulation and taxation, and a valorization of the traditional family. ~ Steven Pinker

I'm pretty earthy; I nursed forever because I liked it and my kids liked it, but at the same time I'm very laissez-faire about stuff like bedtimes and food. ~ Ana Gasteyer

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way. ~ William Graham Sumner

The treasury could fill old bottles with banknotes and bury them..and leave it to private enterprises on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again. ~ John Maynard Keynes

Agile does not mean laissez-faire, flexibility and freedom are based on the well-defined principles. ~ Pearl Zhu

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. ~ H.L. Mencken

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose. ~ Russell Kirk

In advanced societies it is not the race politicians or the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and the creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicians, race leaders and civil rights entrepreneurs whether they come from the Left, Right, or Center, or whether they are peaceful, reform, violent, non-violent or laissez-faire. Which means to say, in advanced societies the cultural front is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by political philistines. ~ Harold Cruse

In reality, government subsidized railroad construction, maintained high protective tariffs and a tight money supply, used its power to crush strikes, and in other ways supported the nation's most powerful economic interests. But the laissez-faire myth still framed political debate. The ~ Steven J. Diner

Writing this book was primarily, I suppose, as most books are for their authors, a matter of self-education; more particularly, of the long re-education I had to undertake after seven Trotskyist years. I was grateful to these Machiavellians, and perhaps I gave them rather more than their due. Having come to know something of the gigantic ideology of Bolshevism, I knew that I was not going to be able to settle for the pygmy ideologies of Liberalism, social democracy, refurbished laissez-faire or the inverted, cut-rate Bolshevism called "fascism". Through the Machiavellians I began to understand more thoroughly what I had long felt: that only by renouncing all ideology can we begin to see the world and man. ~ James Burnham

Throughout the 19th century, when there was a laissez-faire mentality and insufficient regulation, you had one crisis after another. Each crisis brought about some reform. That is how central banking developed. ~ George Soros

It's Laissez-Faire Until You Get In Deep Shit ~ Michael Lewis

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise. ~ Nouriel Roubini

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. ~ Ayn Rand

We must abandon definitely the laissez-faire theory of political economy, and fearlessly champion a system of increased Governmental control, paying no heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as Socialistic. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all ... Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. ~ John Maynard Keynes

If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions. ~ James K.A. Smith

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive. ~ John Ruskin

I've worn Niki's pants for two days now. I thought a third day in the same clothes might be pushing it."

Ian shrugged with indifference. "It might send Derian through the roof, but it doesn't bother me. Wear what you want to wear."

Eena wrinkled her nose at him. "Do you really feel that way or are you trying to appear more laissez-faire than Derian?"

"More laissez-faire?"

"Yes. That's a real word."

"Two words actually," he grinned. "Laissez faire et laissez passer, le monde va de lui même!" He coated the words with a heavy French accent. Eena gawked at him.

"Since when do you speak French?"

"I don't." Ian chuckled. "But I did do some research in world history the year I followed you around on Earth. Physics was a joke, but history - that I found fascinating."

Slapping a hand against her chest, Eena exclaimed, "I can't believe it! Unbeknownst to me, Ian actually studied something in high school other than the library's collection of sci-fi paperbacks!"

He grimaced at her exaggerated performance before defending his preferred choice of reading material. "Hey, popular literature is a valuable and enlightening form of world history. You would know that if you read a book or two."

She ignored his reproach and asked with curiosity, "What exactly did you say?"

"In French?"

"Duh, yes."

"Don't 'duh' me, you could easily have been referring to ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud. ~ Benito Mussolini

Alan, as per his usual routine, got up early and peeked into my rom to check on me. What he found were his teenage stepdaughter and her childhood sweetheart curled up in the same bed, sound asleep and draped all over each other. He hissed my name, alarmed: "Jenna!"
"Wha-?" I sat straight up, immediately aware of what was happening and how it all looked. I clambered over Cameron, who was just coming to consciousness, and followed Alan into the kitchen.
"It's nothing, I swear," I said in a whisper. If Mom wasn't up yet, I wanted to keep it that way.
Alan shook his head. "It looks bad." He glanced toward my bedroom. "Was that Ethan? Tell him to come out here. I want to talk to him."
"Um, it's not Ethan. It's Cameron."
He put his hands to his head. "Jenna. Jenna."
"I know. Is Mom awake?"
"Not yet."
I kept my voice low. "Can we talk by the fish tank?"
He led, I followed.
"He came to my window in the night," I explained. "He needed to talk. I let him in. It was me. It was my idea. It was all...nothing happened."
"This isn't my area," Alan said, looking at the fish. "Your mom is supposed to do the tough stuff. We have a policy of laissez-faire when it comes to me and...this kind of thing."
"Exactly. So," I said hopefully, "go make the coffee and we'll pretend nothing every happened."
Cameron came into the room, his blanket wrapped around him. His hair was sticking up in the back, and his long eyelashes hooded sleepy e ~ Sara Zarr

Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice. Only in this way can we really extend democracy within the Party and at the same time avoid ultra-democracy and the laissez-faire that destroys discipline. ~ Mao Zedong

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish. ~ Frederic Bastiat

This is the East Coast, boy. I know they're pretty laissez-faire about dress in your neck of the woods, but back here 52. they don't let you run around in your bathing suit all year long.
Blacks and blues, that's the ticket, blacks and blues ... (Bunny Corcoran to Richard Papen) ~ Donna Tartt

Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished. ~ Nicolas Sarkozy

Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Whatever the self-righteous excesses of the environmentalist left, it is impossible to be true to traditional conservative values (to say nothing of the Christian faith conservatives like me profess) and hold laissez faire attitudes about the use and abuse of the natural world. ~ Rod Dreher

I found most of my friends quite content to be used as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken from them were employed against their own beliefs and interests. They had lived so long under the system of using others, and then in their turn being used by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and looked on this subjecting and using of each other as a part of the necessary and even Providential order of things. The great machine had taken possession of their souls. ~ Auberon Herbert

The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly. ~ Isabel Paterson

On issue after issue, the polls - and these are not snapshot polls; these are polls over a consistent period of time - show that most Americans share what one could call core liberal or progressive values: investment in health care and education over tax cuts; fair trade over free trade; corporate accountability over deregulation; environmental protection over laissez-faire policies; defending Social Security and Medicare over privatizing them; raising the minimum wage over eliminating it. The country prefers progressive alternatives to the failed policies of the conservative right. ~ Katrina Vanden Heuvel

The more laws and restrictions there are,
The poorer people become.
...
The more rules and regulations,
The more thieves and robbers. ~ Lao-Tzu

People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

Laissez faire does not mean: let soulless mechanical forces operate. It means: let individuals choose how they want to cooperate in the social division of labor and let them determine what the entrepreneurs should produce. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

The authority and influence of France on the world scene in the 21st century will not depend solely on its modernity and cohesion, nor even on the continuity and professionalism of its foreign policy. France will be heeded if it has a message to convey. Faced with the temptations of laissez-faire, France must stand out as the nation with the imagination and determination to pursue an ambition that combines cogency with generosity. ~ Jacques Chirac

It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole ... If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them. ~ Adolf Hitler

Laissez faire! Let things alone! have said the judges of the camp. Careers are open; and although the field is covered with corpses, although the conqueror stamps on the bodies of the vanquished, although by supply and demand, and the combinations and monopolies in which they result, the greater part of society becomes enslaved to the few, let things along - for thus has decreed fair play. It is by virtue of this beautiful system that a parvenu, without speaking of the great lord who receives counties as his heritage, is able to conquer with ready money thousands of acres, expel those who cultivate his domain, and replace people and their dwellings with wild animals and rare trees. It is thus that a tradesman, more cunning or intelligent, or, perhaps, more favored by luck than his fellows, is enabled to become master of an army of workers, and as often as not to starve them at his pleasure. ~ Elisee Reclus

So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'. ~ Emma Goldman

My parents couldn't be looser. It was the ultimate laissez faire upbringing. ~ Charlie Trotter

Laissez-faire, says the professor, when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest - for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The proper governmental policy in a depression is strict laissez-faire, including stringent budget slashing, and coupled perhaps with positive encouragement for credit contraction. ~ Murray Rothbard

The act of our creation is equal for all of us. The results of our creation are not. The goal of our Founding Fathers was to treat everyone equally under the law, and as such, provide for equality of opportunity, not results. ~ A.E. Samaan

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise - liberty and coercion. ~ Frederic Bastiat