Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Henry Hazlitt
Age: 98 †
Born: 1894
Born: November 28
Died: 1993
Died: July 8
Economist
Journalist
Philosopher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Henry Stuart Hazlitt
Trying
Undertakes
Things
Tries
Badly
Fewer
Completely
Government
Everything
Must

More quotes by Henry Hazlitt

Image
It is possible to increase paper-money income to any amount by debasing the currency. But real income can only be increased by working harder or more efficiently, saving more, investing more, and producing more.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Prolonged inflation never 'stimulates' the economy. On the contrary, it unbalances, disrupts, and misdirects production and employment.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
The tendency of welfare spending in the United States has been to increase at an exponential rate.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
Liberty is the essential basis, the sine qua non, of morality.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Give me the clear blue sky above my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking!
Henry Hazlitt
Image
The only way government bureaucrats know of keeping prosperity going is to inflate some more - to increase the deficit or to pump more money into the system.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
If precious metals had been abundant, they would not have been precious.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
The only real cure for poverty is production.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
Arbitrary government power is being multiplied daily by the now practically unchallenged assumption that wherever there is any problem of any kind to be solved, government is the agency to step in and solve it.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
In a free enterprise system, with an honest and stable money, there is dominantly a close link between effort and productivity, on the one hand, and economic reward on the other. Inflation severs this link. Reward comes to depend less and less on effort and production, and more and more on successful gambling and luck.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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
Image
If a government resorts to inflation, that is, creates money in order to cover its budget deficits or expands credit in order to stimulate business, then no power on earth, no gimmick, device, trick or even indexation can prevent its economic consequences.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.
Henry Hazlitt
Image
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