Leonard Read Quotes - Page 2

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• There is no moral distinction between petty thievery and 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.'

  Leonard Read

  Needs, Moral, Distinction

  9 Copy quote

• No one has more than scratched the surface when it comes to understanding and explaining the miracle of the market.

  Leonard Read

  Miracle, Understanding, Surface

  4 Copy quote

• Assume that a surgeon has discovered how to do brain surgery, that he can do only one a month, that 1,000 persons a year need such an operation if they are to survive. How is the surgeon's scarce resource to be allocated? Charge whatever price is necessary to adjust supply and demand, say $50,000! 'For shame,' some will cry. 'Your market system will save only wealthy people.' For the moment, yes. But soon there will be hundreds of surgeons who will acquire the same skill; and, as in the case of the once scarce and expensive 'miracle drugs,' the price then will be within reach of all.

  Leonard Read

  Years, Skills, People

  15 Copy quote

• If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency - so much 'security' that 'the secured' are without resources - helpless and hopeless.

  Leonard Read

  Names, Defense, Hopeless

  4 Copy quote

• The system of plunder derives much of its support from individuals who do not subscribe to socialism but who say, 'We're paying for it, so we might as well get our share'

  Leonard Read

  Support, Might, Socialism

  4 Copy quote

• Politicians, bureaucrats, editors, new commentators, 'economists' teachers,' and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies...these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs - and don't know it!

  Leonard Read

  Teacher, Artist, Editors

  9 Copy quote

• Insecurity must follow the transfer of responsibility from self to others, particularly when transferred to arbitrary and capricious government. Genuine security is a matter of self-responsibility, based on the right to the fruits of one's own labor and freedom to trade.

  Leonard Read

  Responsibility, Government, Self

  9 Copy quote

• Coercion is as much the tool of the welfare state as it is of communism. The programs and edicts of both are backed by the police force. All of us know this to be true under communism, but it is equally true under our own brand of welfare statism.

  Leonard Read

  Police, Tools, Coercion

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  13 Copy quote

• It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bear false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning mile, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions - no one could list the instances - are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions.

  Leonard Read

  Morning, Integrity, Phones

  "The Complete Works of Leonard E. Read". 1976.

  12 Copy quote

• Is it not obvious that the more complex an economy, the more certainly will governmental control of productive effort exert a retarding influence?

  Leonard Read

  Effort, Influence, Economy

  4 Copy quote

• A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!

  Leonard Read

  Mean, Government, Venture

  "The Complete Works of Leonard E. Read". 1976.

  9 Copy quote

• The solution to this problem [welfare-statism] must take a positive form: the restoration of a faith in what free men can accomplish.

  Leonard Read

  Men, Restoration, Problem

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  7 Copy quote

• Socialistic practices are now so ingrained in our thinking, so customary, so much a part of our mores, that we take them for granted.

  Leonard Read

  Thinking, Practice, Granted

  4 Copy quote

• The right way is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon - when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty.

  Leonard Read

  Responsibility, Opportunity, Government

  4 Copy quote

• What, actually, is the difference between communism and fascism? Both are forms of statism, authoritarianism. The only difference between Stalin's communism and Mussolini's fascism is an insignificant detail in organizational structure.

  Leonard Read

  Differences, Details, Individualism

  "Neither Left Nor Right". The Freeman Magazine, January, 1956.

  7 Copy quote

• I can remember the time when, if we wanted a house or housing, we relied on private enterprise. In fact, Americans built more square feet of housing per person than any other country on the face of the earth. Despite that remarkable accomplishment, more and more people are coming to believe that the only way we can have adequate housing is to use government to take the earnings from some and give these earnings, in the form of housing, to others.

  Leonard Read

  Country, Believe, Feet

  4 Copy quote

• I would like to suggest to you that the extent to which government in America has departed from the original design of in habiting the destructive actions of man and invoking a common justice; the extent to which government has invaded the productive and creative areas; the extent to which the government in this country has assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of our people is a measure of the extent to which socialism has developed here in this land of ours.

  Leonard Read

  Country, Responsibility, Men

  4 Copy quote

• It [the free market] is an organizational way of doing things, featuring openness, which enables millions of people to cooperate and compete without demanding a preliminary clearance of pedigree, nationality, color, race, religion, or wealth. It demands only that each person abide by voluntary principles, that is, by fair play. The free market means willing exchange; it is impersonal justice in the economic sphere and excludes coercion, plunder, theft, protectionism, and other anti-free market ways by which goods and services change hands.

  Leonard Read

  Mean, Play, Race

  4 Copy quote

• Under both the welfare state and communism, the responsibility for the welfare, security, and prosperity of the people is presumed to rest with the central government.

  Leonard Read

  Responsibility, Government, People

  4 Copy quote

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