Enterprise Quotes - Page 17

• If the present American laws concerning the taxation of the profits of corporations, the incomes of individuals, and inheritances had been introduced about 60 years ago, all those new products whose consumption has raised the standard of living of the 'common man' would either not be produced at all or only in small quantities for the benefit of a minority. The Ford enterprises would not exist if Henry Ford's profits had been taxed away as soon as they came into being.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Men, Years, Law

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• 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

  Successful, Gambling, Hands

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• 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

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• No private enterprise will ever fall prey to bureaucratic methods of management if it is operated with the sole aim of making profit.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Fall, Management, Prey

  Ludwig Von Mises (1969). “Bureaucracy”, ICON Group International

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• In expectation of his demise, a successful businessman may sell out to his competitors to prepare his estate with readily marketable securities, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. The confiscatory death tax eliminates many family enterprises and promotes the growth of giant corporations.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Successful, Expectations, Growth

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• The rationale for the vast network of government welfare programs as well as regulation and control over private enterprise is based on the socialist analysis of the market economy.

  Richard Ebeling

  Government, Welfare Programs, Analysis

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• The quickest and surest way to production, prosperity, and economic growth is through private enterprise. The best way for governments to encourage private enterprise is to establish justice, to enforce contracts, to insure domestic peace and tranquility, to protect private property, and to secure the blessings of liberty including economic liberty - which means to stop putting obstacles in the way of private enterprise.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Mean, Blessing, Government

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.170, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• As time goes on, I get more and more convinced that the right method in investment is to put fairly large sums into enterprises which one thinks one knows something about and in the management of which one thoroughly believes. It is a mistake to think that one limits one's risk by spreading too much between enterprises about which one knows little and has no reason for special confidence. . . . One's knowledge and experience are definitely limited and there are seldom more than two or three enterprises at any given time in which I personally feel myself entitled to put full confidence.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Mistake, Believe, Thinking

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• Every corporate security may be best viewed, in the first instance, as an ownership interest in, or a claim against, a specific business enterprise.

  Benjamin Graham

  May, Firsts, Ownership

  Benjamin Graham (1965). “The Intelligent Investor: A Book of Practical Counsel”, p.205, Prabhat Prakashan

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• Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Hands, Waste, Kind

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.157, VM eBooks

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• A virtue of the free enterprise system is that it offers every individual the greatest opportunity for self expression.

  Lawrence Fertig

  Opportunity, Self, Expression

  Lawrence Fertig (1961). “Prosperity through freedom”

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• Benjamin Graham wrote, "Those with enterprise haven't the money, and those with money haven't the enterprise, to buy stocks when they are cheap."

  Seth Klarman

  Havens

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• The advantage of the consumer businesses is they tend to be much broader-based, much larger number of customers, that tend to over time be a lot more predictable. The advantage of the enterprise companies is they are not as subject to consumer trend, fad, behavior.

  Marc Andreessen

  Numbers, Trends, Fads

  "Marc Andreessen On The Future Of Enterprise". Interview with Alexia Tsotsis, techcrunch.com. January 27, 2013.

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• We are seeing some challenges and some changes in American business, American enterprise, but the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is a reminder of things that must never change: the passion for excellence, the drive to innovate, the hard work that goes with any successful enterprise.

  George W. Bush

  Hard Work, Passion, Successful

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• My belief in free competitive economic enterprise does not rest solely or even mainly on arguments of economic efficiency, though, heaven knows, these are cogent enough. It rests essentially on the view that the free market is the only safe way of ensuring that productive effort is directed towards supplying what individuals actually want, and in a way which secures the dignity and independence of the worker.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Views, Effort, Heaven

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• We are so accustomed to the miracle of private enterprise that we habitually take it for granted. But how does private industry solve the incredibly complex problem of turning out tens of thousands of different goods and services in the proportions in which they are wanted by the public? ... It solves these problems through the institutions of private property, competition, the free market, and the existence of money - through the interrelations of supply and demand, costs and prices, profits and losses.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Loss, Miracle, Competition

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• When individual enterprise is free and unhampered, profit-and-loss calculations set precise limits to a businessman's temptations to expand his services... a government valuable they may be, have no market price and, therefore, cannot be subjected to profit-and-loss accounting.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Loss, Government, Temptation

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• Government-to-government aid rests on socialistic assumptions and promotes socialism and stagnation, whereas private foreign investment rest on capitalist assumptions and promotes private enterprise and maximum economic growth.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Growth, Assumption

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• The characteristic mark of this age of dictators, wars and revolutions is its anticapitalistic bias. Most governments and political parties were eager to restrict the sphere of private initiative and free enterprise.

  Ludwig von Mises

  War, Party, Government

  Ludwig von Mises (2016). “Socialism - An Economic and Sociological Analysis: The Economist”, p.480, VM eBooks

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• The [liberals] consider profits as objectionable. The very existence of profits is in their eyes a proof that wage rates could be raised without harm to anybody. They speak of profit without dealing with loss. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities. A profitable enterprise tends to expand; an unprofitable one tends to shrink. The elimination of profit renders production rigid and abolishes the consumer's control.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Eye, Loss

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• The left controls the media, the institutions of higher learning and the government. They preach against business, disparate merit, decry free enterprise and slander capitalism.

  James Cook

  Government, Media, Merit

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• The surest way for a poor nation to stay poor is to harass, hobble, and straitjacket private enterprise or to discourage or destroy it by subsidized government competition, oppressive taxation, or outright expropriation.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Government, Competition, Poor Nations

  Henry Hazlitt (1971). “Man Vs. the Welfare State”, p.171, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system.

  Milton Friedman

  Economic, Possibility, Resources

  Milton Friedman (1978). “Tax limitation, inflation and the role of government”, Fisher Inst

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• Bureaucrats denounce private enterprise for the consequences of their own reckless policies and demand still more governmental controls.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Demand, Reckless, Policy

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• The market steers the capitalistic economy. It directs each individual's activities into those channels in which he best serves the wants of his fellow-men. The market alone puts the whole social system of private ownership of the means of production and free enterprise in order and provides it with sense and meaning.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Mean, Men, Order

  Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Newton Rothbard (1980). “Planning for freedom, and sixteen other essays and addresses”, Libertarian Press, Incorporated

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