Interventionism Quotes

• Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, Honesty, War

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1801

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• An essential point in the social philosophy of interventionism is the existence of an inexhaustible fund which can be squeezed forever. The whole system of interventionism collapses when the fountain is drained off: The Santa Clause principle liquidates itself.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Forever, Principles

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• The habit of ubiquitous interventionism, combining pinprick strikes by precision weapons with pious invocations of high principle, would lead us into endless difficulties. Interventions must be limited in number and overwhelming in their impact.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Impact, Numbers, Principles

  Margaret Thatcher (2017). “Statecraft”, p.32, HarperCollins UK

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• The constant refrain that bringing our troops home would demonstrate a lack of support for them must be one of the most amazing distortions ever foisted on the American public.

  Ron Paul

  Home, Support, Troops

  "The War Funding Bill". www.counterpunch.org. March 23, 2007.

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• The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do.

  Rory Stewart

  Humanitarian, International Relations, Ought

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• To condemn free-market capitalism because of anything going on today makes no sense. There is no evidence that capitalism exists today. We are deeply involved in an interventionist-planned economy that allows major benefits to accrue to the politically connected of both political parties. One may condemn the fraud and the current system, but it must be called by its proper names — Keynesian inflationism, interventionism, and corporatism.

  Ron Paul

  Party, Names, Political

  Ron Paul (2008). “Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property”, p.44, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• There is nothing new in state interventionism. It is as old and reactionary as societal organization itself. Always, when it permeates the body politic, it kills the nation.

  Spruille Braden

  Organization, Liberty, Body

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• There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

  Barney Frank

  Thinking, Degrees, Foreign Policy

  "Reps. Barney Frank & Ron Paul on Military Spending". "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer, www.realclearpolitics.com. July 7, 2010.

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• Interventionism cannot be considered as an economic system destined to stay. It is a method for the transformation of capitalism into socialism by a series of successive steps.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Steps, Transformation, Socialism

  Ludwig von Mises (2015). “Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism”, p.28, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• There has been sort of, if you will, a moral interventionism on the part of the United States trying to reshape countries in our own image. Now, we had to go into Afghanistan. We didn't have to go into Iraq. But the idea that you could create a Vermont in the Middle East like that was naive from the beginning.

  Pat Buchanan

  Country, Ideas, Iraq

  Source: www.npr.org

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• The cost in terms of liberties lost and the unnecessary exposure to terrorism are difficult to determine, but in time it will become apparent to all of us that foreign interventionism is of no benefit to American citizens, but is instead a threat to our liberties.

  Ron Paul

  Liberty, Citizens, Cost

  Ron Paul (2008). “The Revolution: A Manifesto”, p.12, Hachette UK

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• Interventionism is inextricable from the American idea. If the United States retreats into isolationism, it ceases to be itself ? a nation dedicated, however much it falls short, to a universalist ideal of freedom.

  Roger Cohen

  Fall, Ideas, United States

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• We need only take our heads out of the sand to see clearly that interventionism not only has failed to provide the promised something-for-nothing, but has led to all sorts of undesirable consequences. Indeed, many are just beginning to realize that we are moving towards disaster even though we have been on a wrong heading for decades.

  Leonard Read

  Moving, Gold, Needs

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• There is no such thing as a just and fair method of exercising the tremendous power that interventionism puts into the hands of the legislature and the executive.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Exercise, Hands, Legislature

  Ludwig Von Mises (1963). “Human action: a treatise on economics”

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• Socialism and interventionism. Both have in common the goal of subordinating the individual unconditionally to the state.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Goal, Common, Socialism

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• In the time just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when Perfidia opens, we were pre-psychologized. There were no concepts of identity, no politics of victimization. Reparation wasn't in the language. Nobody thought about giving the great grandchildren of black slaves so much as $1.98. And all of a sudden the bombs hit, interventionism versus isolationism became a dead issue, and it was us-versus-them in a heartbeat.

  James Ellroy

  Grandchildren, Issues, Giving

  Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 9, 2014.

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• What precisely is this disease that causes inflation and all these other troubles? It has many popular names, such as socialism, communism, state interventionism, and welfare statism.

  Leonard Read

  Names, Disease, Causes

  Leonard E. Read (1990). “The freedom philosophy”, Foundation for Economic Education

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• The many woes that afflict out nation are rooted in the morally bankrupt paradigms of socialism, interventionism, and empire that have held our nation in their grip for decades and that the only real solution to such woes is libertarianism.

  Jacob G. Hornberger

  Real, Woe, Empires

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• Until the 1930s, the Constitution served as a major constraint on federal economic interventionism. The government's powers were understood to be just as the framers intended: few and explicitly enumerated in our founding document and its amendments. Search the Constitution as long as you like, and you will find no specific authority conveyed for the government to spend money on global-warming research, urban mass transit, food stamps, unemployment insurance, Medicaid, or countless other items in the stimulus package and, even without it, in the regular federal budget.

  Robert Higgs

  Government, Long, Unemployment

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• Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing.

  Leonard Read

  Egalitarianism, Labels, Nazism

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• It is indeed one of the principal drawbacks of every kind of interventionism that it is so difficult to reverse the process.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Kind, Drawbacks, Process

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.444, VM eBooks

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