Top 100 Quotes About Free Markets
#1. What we have to do is to definitively remove the last vestiges of power from those who treat terms such as 'liberal democracy,' 'free markets' and 'Europe' with suspicion.
Donald Tusk
#2. In other words, "free markets" ideology, with its libertarian idealism, has in fact produced Mussolini-style corporatism. And until we learn to call the resulting looting by its proper name, it is certain to continue.
Yves Smith
#3. I'd like to talk about free markets. Information in the computer age is the last genuine free market left on earth except those free markets where indigenous people are still surviving. And that's basically becoming limited.
Russell Means
#4. There's not a single country that actually approaches economics in a pure, free market, capitalist way. I like the free market - but it very much exists only in textbooks. If I had a choice, and we could live in a very pure world, I would be a supporter of the free markets.
Dambisa Moyo
#5. We will have to stand up for and promote the power and promise of free markets and free peoples, and affirm that American preeminence safeguards rather than impedes global progress.
Condoleezza Rice
#6. I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#7. It is not uncommon to suppose that the free exchange of property in markets and capitalism are one and the same. They are not. While capitalism operates through the free market, free markets don't require capitalism.
Jeremy Rifkin
#8. It is not an accident that developing countries - virtually the whole of East Asia, for example - view the role of the state in a far more interventionist way than does the Anglo-Saxon world. Laissez-faire and free markets are the favoured means of the powerful and privileged.
Martin Jacques
#9. The Democrats promised equalizing outcomes through unlimited federal assistance while Republicans offered something that seemed less tangible - the promise of equalizing opportunity through free markets.
Rand Paul
#10. The U.S. has since the end of World War II had an answer - we stand for free peoples and free markets, we are willing to support and defend them - we will sustain a balance of power that favors freedom.
Condoleezza Rice
#11. Yes, free markets tend to produce unequal incomes. We should not be ashamed of that. On the contrary, our system is the envy of the world and should be a source of pride.
Arthur C. Brooks
#12. China and India are feeding their people for the first time in human history due to free markets, and the Left knows that, and it gets them nervous.
Dave Brat
#13. The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise.
Henry Hazlitt
#14. In the United States, the government is bailing out banks, intervening in the economy, yet in Latin America, the Right continues to talk about 'free markets.' It's totally outdated; they don't have arguments; they don't have any sense.
Hugo Chavez
#15. American future lies in the East. The great free markets of the Pacific Rim are the American destiny.
Donald Freed
#16. As the economy faces such difficulties, more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.
Lucy Powell
#17. When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.
Jack Kemp
#18. Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation, we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.
Newt Gingrich
#19. There's room in the Republican Party for anyone who wants to be a part of the values that we espouse when it comes to the role of government, free enterprise, free markets.
Michael Steele
#21. But now, we are becoming suspicious of the very things we have long celebrated - free markets, trade, immigration, and technological change. And all this is happening when the tide is going our way. Just as the world is opening up, America is closing down.
Fareed Zakaria
#22. While free markets tend to democratize a society, unfettered capitalism leads invariably to corporate control of government.
Robert Kennedy
#23. One of the wonderful things about free markets is that the path to greater wealth comes not from looting, plundering and enslaving one's fellow man, as it has throughout most of human history, but by serving and pleasing him.
Walter E. Williams
#24. Free markets. What does this system mean? The answer is simple: it is the market economy, it is the system in which the cooperation of individuals in the social division of labor is achieved by the market.
Ludwig Von Mises
#25. Everyone's for free markets except when it affects your own business.
Dave Brat
#26. The Jacksonians were libertarians, plain and simple. Their program and ideology were libertarian; they strongly favored free enterprise and free markets, but they just as strongly opposed special subsidies and monopoly privileges conveyed by government to business or to any other group.
Murray Rothbard
#27. If you really want to help the rest of the world, what you've got to do is encourage free markets, private property rights and the strong rule of law and get rid of the dictators in a lot of these countries.
Dave Brat
#28. There's something about China and its rush to capitalism that I find confusing. At the same time, we live in an America where capitalists oppose any government interference with free markets, while in China you have a very controlled, state-planned market where economic growth is better than ours.
David Henry Hwang
#29. I believe that if you go and ask a chief executive of a Goldman Sachs or a BP, and they answer you honestly ... they want monopolies, they want government subsidies, they want preferences - they're not interested in free markets.
Ian Bremmer
#30. Most of us at the Reserve Bank come from a background in economics and hence have a predisposition in favour of free markets and a sceptical attitude towards intervention in those markets unless there is a clearly defined economic rationale for it.
Ian Macfarlane
#32. The American system of political spending is so unregulated that it might make Adam Smith rethink free markets.
Jon Meacham
#33. The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.
Milton Friedman
#34. While I am a fervent believer in free markets and limited government, there are rare instances in which government involvement is necessary.
Steve Largent
#35. In terms of personalities - I don't care about the personalities, I want leadership that's in favor of my principles: free markets, adherence to the Constitution, and equal treatment for everyone under the law.
Dave Brat
#36. Free markets are necessary to promote long-term growth, but they are not self-regulating, particularly when it comes to banks and other large financial institutions.
Francis Fukuyama
#37. British Empire acted as an agency for imposing free markets, the rule of law, investor protection and relatively incorrupt government on roughly a quarter of the world.
Niall Ferguson
#38. If we want our regulators to do better, we have to embrace a simple idea: regulation isn't an obstacle to thriving free markets; it's a vital part of them.
James Surowiecki
#39. Conservatism vests in and depends on the widespread, informed understanding of human nature, self-governance and the First Principle of Progress: free people interacting in free markets produce the greatest good for the greatest number always, but only, when tethered to virtue and morality.
Mary Matalin
#40. This election presents a stark choice - we can continue down the road of the Obama Democrats, more and more spending, debt and government control of the economy, or we can return to the founding principles of our nation - free markets, fiscal responsibility and individual liberty.
Ted Cruz
#41. I like Ronald Reagan, who didn't play crass politics, and he just articulated and delivered on broad themes that were needed. Free markets meant free markets. Deregulation. Lower tax rates. Strong national defense. And he was credible and believable.
Dave Brat
#42. In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
Matt Taibbi
#43. In a system of free trade and free markets poor countries - and poor people - are not poor because others are rich. Indeed, if others became less rich the poor would in all probability become still poorer.
Margaret Thatcher
#44. And the Tea Party represents many of us who believe that we are taxed enough already. We believe in free markets.
Tim Scott
#45. With the passing of Milton Friedman on November 16, 2006, we lost one of the great champions of free markets.
Steve Hanke
#46. Democrats want to use government power to make people's lives go better; Republicans respond that people know more than politicians do. We think that both might be able to agree that nudging can maintain free markets, and liberty, while also inclining people in good directions.
Cass Sunstein
#47. Defense of free markets is where we need to be when establishing a vision for national technology policy.
Marsha Blackburn
#48. Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.
John Katzman
#49. Free markets are a tool, free speech is a goal.
Tim Bray
#50. There are good people and bad people in all organizations fundamentally however, when you look at the basis of the Tea Party it has nothing to do with race. It has to do with an economic recovery. It has to do with limiting the role of our government in our lives. It has to do with free markets.
Tim Scott
#51. I'm not anti-Wall Street - I'm anti-distortions to free markets.
Dave Brat
#52. We need a revolution in development thinking and practice. Foreign aid, debt relief, family planning, democracy, education, and free markets have not succeeded.
William Easterly
#53. It's a funny thing, by the way, how people who love free markets are also quite sure that they know that investors are being irrational.
Paul Krugman
#54. Reject the phony Patients' Bill of Rights ... We don't have to continue down the path of socialized medical care, especially in America where free markets have provided so much for so many.
Ron Paul
#55. Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.
William Easterly
#56. Marx's critique of free markets and free trade can shed as much devastating light on our own actually existing capitalism as it did for the capitalism of Marx's own time and place.
David Harvey
#57. Fighting for free enterprise means standing up for free markets. The freedom to succeed includes the freedom to fail. We must defend entrepreneurial capitalism against the onslaught of the American Left.
Mike Pence
#58. We have gotten to the point where everything the government does is counterproductive; the conclusion, of course, is that the government should do nothing at all, that is, should retire quickly from the monetary and economic scene and allow freedom and free markets to work.
Murray Rothbard
#59. Hank Paulson, the happy capitalist warrior who spent his life pursuing and defending free markets, is now the biggest interventionist Treasury secretary we've had since the Great Depression.
Charles Duhigg
#60. Free markets are based on the free circulation of labor. If you don't have free circulation of labor, you don't have free markets.
Noam Chomsky
#61. I prefer for government to err toward less regulation, lower taxation, and free markets. And I'm a radical free trader.
Mark McKinnon
#62. When you argue for free markets, you are arguing against the trend.
Milton Friedman
#63. They're lots of good Americans here in New York who have common sense and who believe in free markets and free people and limited government under our Constitution. Those are the principles I've always stood for. I know they're right, and that's what I'm going to stand for.
Wendy E. Long
#64. More than anything else, let me be clear - we need to be willing to fight for freedom, and free markets, and traditional moral values. That's what the American people want to see this movement and this party return to.
Mike Pence
#65. I stated that I'm a libertarian Republican, which means I believe in a series of issues, such as smaller government, constraint on budget deficits, free markets, globalization, and a whole series of other things, including welfare reform.
Alan Greenspan
#66. It's absurd. We would all like to see Cuba move toward civil society and free markets and greater respect for human rights. But the U.S. policy is exactly the wrong way to go about it.
Wayne Smith
#67. I debated free trade in college. I came out as a free trader. I'm a free markets guy. I'm an Adam Smith guy.
Sam Wyly
#68. I'm not a knee-jerk conservative. I passionately believe in free markets and less government, but not to the point of being a libertarian.
Rupert Murdoch
#71. The government can't create jobs; they'll destroy jobs trying to do it. The government doesn't have any money; all they have is a printing press. We need to free markets to create jobs; if the government wants to help, they should reduce their burden on the economy.
Peter Schiff
#72. Free markets and capitalism are predicated upon the definition of greed as altruistic in economics".
~R. Alan Woods [2012]
R. Alan Woods
#73. If progressives were interested in mitigating inequality, they would support the dynamism of free markets to allow the merit of ideas, products and services to win the day rather than stifle companies and pick winners in the name of imagined 'progress.'
David Harsanyi
#74. It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
#75. Myth: There's conflict between selfish free markets and a benevolent world of human sympathy.
Ted Malloch
#76. The pillars of classical liberalism call for flat taxes, with revenues put to limited uses; strong property rights; and free markets.
Richard A. Epstein
#77. We want everybody to get rich. The Republican Party is often called unloving, uncaring, not generous, or whatever - that's a bunch of baloney. We're the party that believes in free markets.
Dave Brat
#78. Arguing that the only problem with a free market is lack of competition, is like arguing that that the only problem with prostitution is that there aren't enough pimps.
Quentin R. Bufogle
#79. There's a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people.
They used to be priests, and now they're leftists.
Stefan Molyneux
#80. I am convinced that both markets and free trade are good, but the traditional answer that we give to students to explain why they are good, the one based on perfect competition and Pareto optimality, is becoming untenable. Something much more interesting and more complicated is going on here
Paul Romer
#81. Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times.
Lawrence W. Reed
#82. Capitalist production ... was necessary to develop the productive forces of society to a level which will make possible an equal development worthy of human beings for all members of society. All earlier forms of society were too poor for this.
Friedrich Engels
#83. America, the land of the free, is turning itself into the land of the free ride. [U.S. airlines] are operating in protected markets. They are hoovering up public funds and they still can't make a profit.
Rod Eddington
#84. When America closes its doors, so does everybody else. We are the primary engine of growth in the world and we are the only beacon of free trade left, and open markets.
Jon Huntsman Jr.
#85. People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty.
Jeffrey Tucker
#86. Antiliberals endlessly berate their enemies for "instrumental thinking." But they do not clearly explain the evil of producing better goods at a lower cost.
Stephen Holmes
#87. A "centrally planned economy" by definition discourages and despises participation by the masses. It's a bureaucratic oligarchy.
A.E. Samaan
#88. Late 19th-century populists saw bankers and industrialists manipulating markets to enrich themselves at the expense of small farmers and labourers and favoured political candidates promising economic relief through free and unlimited coinage of silver.
Robert Dallek
#89. It is clear that both at home and abroad producers have been unwilling to trust their fortunes entirely to the unrestricted play of competition. Both in world and domestic markets businessmen have sought security by substituting collective controls for the free play of market forces.
George W. Stocking
#90. To open up new markets and create American jobs, we need to make global bilateral free trade agreements a priority as they were under the Clinton administration.
Mark McKinnon
#91. We know that social exclusion is closely tied to the new economic world order, globalized, with free and open markets, which isn't bringing prosperity or social justice to all.
Claudio Hummes
#92. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another- yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago.
Milton Friedman
#93. Socialism, or communism as it is sometimes called, is merely a secular religion, where the State becomes a god.
Stefan Molyneux
#94. The myth of "free choice" begins with "free market" and "free trade". When five transnational corporations control the seed market, it is not a free market, it is a cartel.
Vandana Shiva
#95. Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making.
Jeffrey Tucker
#96. In a democracy, you don't need anyone's permission to form a new political party, publish a politically charged article, or organize a 'tea party.' And in open markets, individuals are free to buy and invest as they see fit.
Gary Hamel
#97. The free market is 'socialism' for the rich: the public pays the costs and the rich get the benefit - markets for the poor and plenty of state protection for the rich.
Noam Chomsky
#98. The times are too difficult and the crisis too severe to indulge in schadenfreude. Looking at it in perspective, the fact that there would be a financial crisis was perfectly predictable: its general nature, if not its magnitude. Markets are always inefficient.
Noam Chomsky
#99. Vegetable box schemes, local greengrocers, farmers' markets and organic stores are a great place to source package-free foods.
Sheherazade Goldsmith
