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It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it.

Henry Hazlitt

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Henry Hazlitt
Age: 98 †
Born: 1894
Born: November 28
Died: 1993
Died: July 8
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Henry Stuart Hazlitt
Shows
Present
Economist
Political
Honest
Platforms
Demagogues
Better
Philosophy
Truths
Complained
Trying
Economic
Nonsense
Remarked
Good
Public
Errors
Economists
Men
Wrong
Economics
Plausible
Show
Putting
Sadly
Often
Forward
Platform

More quotes by Henry Hazlitt

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The government has nothing to give to anybody that it doesn't first take from someone else.
Henry Hazlitt
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Government welfarism, with its ever-increasing army of pensioners and other beneficiaries, is fatally easy to launch and fatally easy to extend, but almost impossible to bring to a halt - and quite impossible politically to reverse, no matter how obvious and catastrophic its consequences become.
Henry Hazlitt
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The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything it must do everything badly.
Henry Hazlitt
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For every alleged benefit that the politicians confer upon us, they must necessarily deprive us of something else.
Henry Hazlitt
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Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.
Henry Hazlitt
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The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans.
Henry Hazlitt
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If there is to be no loss whatever of dignity or self-respect in getting and staying on relief, then there can be no gain in dignity or self-respect in makings some sacrifices to keep off.
Henry Hazlitt
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To try to cure unemployment by inflation rather than by adjustment of specific wage-rates is like trying to adjust the piano to the stool rather than the stool to the piano.
Henry Hazlitt
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The system of capitalism, of the market economy, is a system of freedom, of justice, of productivity. But these three virtues cannot be separated. Each flows out of the other.
Henry Hazlitt
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A hundred welfare programs, spending more and more billions, lead to chronic budget deficits, which lead to increased paper-money issues, which lead to higher prices.
Henry Hazlitt
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Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.
Henry Hazlitt
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Once the premise is accepted that poverty is never the fault of the poor but the fault of 'society,' or of 'the capitalist system, then there is no definable limit to be set on relief, and the politicians who want to be elected or reelected will compete with each other in proposing new 'welfare' programs to fill some hitherto 'unmet need.'
Henry Hazlitt
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From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation.
Henry Hazlitt
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Libertarians are learning to their sorrow that big businessmen cannot necessarily be relied upon to be their allies in the battle against extension of governmental encroachments.
Henry Hazlitt
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There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.
Henry Hazlitt
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A Day never passes without some ardent reformer or group of reformers suggesting some new government intervention, some new statist scheme to fill some alleged 'need' or relieve some alleged distress.
Henry Hazlitt
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The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.
Henry Hazlitt
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The long-run historical tendency of capitalism has not only been to increase real incomes more or less proportionately nearly all along the line, but to benefit the masses even more than the rich.
Henry Hazlitt
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Relief, or redistribution of income, voluntary or coerced, is never the true solution of poverty, but at best a makeshift, which may mask the disease and mitigate the pain, but provides no basic cure.
Henry Hazlitt
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The way to get a maximum rate of 'economic growth' assuming this to be our aim - is to give maximum encouragement to production, employment, saving, and investment. And the way to do this is to maintain a free market and a sound currency.
Henry Hazlitt