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Political power intoxicates the best hearts. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with much political power.

Hans F. Sennholz

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Hans F. Sennholz
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More quotes by Hans F. Sennholz

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Unfortunately, it is not in the power of government to make everyone more prosperous. Government can only raise the income of one person by taking from another.
Hans F. Sennholz
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When all the mysticism is stripped away, the people who comprise the government (the legislators, administrators, judges, and policemen), are guided by human interests, desires, beliefs, notions, and prejudices, just like other people. They have neither superhuman wisdom nor extraordinary virtue.
Hans F. Sennholz
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When individual enterprise is free and unhampered, profit-and-loss calculations set precise limits to a businessman's temptations to expand his services... a government valuable they may be, have no market price and, therefore, cannot be subjected to profit-and-loss accounting.
Hans F. Sennholz
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To live beyond your means today is to live below them tomorrow.
Hans F. Sennholz
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A monetary order created and managed by politicians and officials is bound to disappoint.
Hans F. Sennholz
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The popular notion that an increase in the stock of money is socially and economically beneficial and desirable is one of the great fallacies of our time.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Few policies are more calculated to destroy the existing basis of a free society than the debauching of its currency. And few tasks, if any, are more important to the champion of freedom than creation of a sound monetary system.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Every businessman enjoying customer patronage, whether he be a baker, banker, or barber is conferring a public benefit, raising production, and reducing unemployment businessmen earn their livelihood by producing products and rendering services where ever they are needed.
Hans F. Sennholz
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A government debt is a government claim against personal income and private property - an unpaid tax bill.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Government is rather ill-suited and poorly equipped to alleviate the plight of the poor. It lacks moral rules or standards, and is devoid of basic principles in economic and social matters.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Modern government has become a universal transfer agency that utilizes the political process for distributing vast measures of income and wealth. It preys on millions of victims in order to allocate valuable goods and services to its beneficiaries.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Envy is more irreconcilable than hate. It is the most corroding of all political vices and also a great power in our land. The friends of freedom are content to be envied, but envy not.
Hans F. Sennholz
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The government transfers income and wealth according to the rules of politics, which make politicians the primary beneficiaries of the system, and the poor and needy the primary victims.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Inflationism is a dreadful cancer that is gnawing at the backbone of the civilized order.
Hans F. Sennholz
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The gold standard, in one form or another, will prevail long after the present rash of national fiats is forgotten or remembered only in currency museums.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Every individual is a potential gold buyer, although he may not need the gold. It may be added to the store of personal wealth, and passed from generation to generation as an object of family wealth. There is no other economic good as marketable as gold.
Hans F. Sennholz
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Sound money and free banking are not impossible they are merely illegal.
Hans F. Sennholz
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The transfer society is forever testing the bounds of patience of taxpayers. Having reached the limit and still facing loud demands for more benefits, it resorts to deficit financing.
Hans F. Sennholz
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No other commodity enjoys as much universal acceptability and marketability as gold.
Hans F. Sennholz
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The history of fiat money is little more than a register of monetary follies and inflations. Our present age merely affords another entry in this dismal register.
Hans F. Sennholz