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The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results.
Walter E. Williams
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Walter E. Williams
Age: 84 †
Born: 1936
Born: March 31
Died: 2020
Died: December 1
Columnist
Economist
Journalist
Radio Personality
University Teacher
Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
Walter Williams
Walter Edward Williams
Private
Concerned
Promoted
Results
Bothers
Public
Pursuing
Interest
Motives
Best
Motive
Good
Bother
People
Interests
More quotes by Walter E. Williams
More important than anything else is for Americans to wise up to class warfare demagoguery and reject the politics of envy.
Walter E. Williams
Many of the wonderful achievements of the 20th century were the result of the pursuit of profits. Unfortunately, demagoguery has led to profits becoming a dirty word. Nonprofit is seen as more righteous, particularly when people pompously stand before us and declare, 'We're a nonprofit organization.'
Walter E. Williams
How does something immoral, when done privately, become moral when it is done collectively? Furthermore, does legality establish morality? Slavery was legal apartheid is legal Stalinist, Nazi, and Maoist purges were legal. Clearly, the fact of legality does not justify these crimes. Legality, alone, cannot be the talisman of moral people.
Walter E. Williams
We will not make inroads into the gun-violence problem until we acknowledge the underlying causes of youth behavior today, compared to yesterday. ... we must come to the realization that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society. It's morality that is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.
Walter E. Williams
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
The reason why the world's leftists give the world' s most horrible murderers a pass is because they sympathize with their socioeconomic goals, which include government ownership and/or control over the means of production. In the U.S., the call is for government control, through regulations, as opposed to ownership.
Walter E. Williams
If the Constitution framers would come back today, they would have contempt for most of us.
Walter E. Williams
The framers gave us the Second Amendment not so we could go deer or duck hunting but to give us a modicum of protection against congressional tyranny.
Walter E. Williams
We should view our government the way we should a friendly, cuddly lion. Just because he's friendly and cuddly shouldn't blind us to the fact that he's still got teeth and claws.
Walter E. Williams
Vote for me. I'll use my office to take another American's money and give it to you.
Walter E. Williams
Tyrants always condemn and seek to replace the market process with government coercion because tyrants do not trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrants think they should do.
Walter E. Williams
It was Thomas Jefferson who said that we should not allow the courts to have a monopoly on the interpretation of what is constitutional and what is not.
Walter E. Williams
Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?
Walter E. Williams
Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's fellow man hardly qualifies as charity.
Walter E. Williams
Preaching doom and gloom has been beneficial to the political class. They use it to gain more power and control.
Walter E. Williams
It's people seeking more for themselves that has produced a better life for all Americans.
Walter E. Williams
Once Congress establishes that one person can live at the expense of another, it pays for everyone to try to do so.
Walter E. Williams
Tariff policy beneficiaries are always visible, but its victims are mostly invisible. Politicians love this. The reason is simple: The beneficiaries know for whom to cast their ballots, and the victims don't know whom to blame for their calamity.
Walter E. Williams
If you hate my guts and have designs to hurt me, and I see you building a cannon aimed at my house, I am not going to wait for you to finish construction.
Walter E. Williams
Legislators aren't known for being rocket scientists.
Walter E. Williams
