Private Enterprise Quotes

• 

  Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Horse, Business

  The Economist, July 6, 2012.

  110 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

  Winston Churchill

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Democratic Socialism

  Speech at the Scottish Unionist Conference, Perth, Scotland, May 28, 1948.

  542 Copy quote

  Show source
• 

  The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

  Winston Churchill

  Inspirational, Freedom, Independent

  Sir Winston Churchill (1965). “The Churchill Wit”

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

  Winston Churchill

  Being Strong, Veterans Day, Stay Strong

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.395, Da Capo Press

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.

  Winston Churchill

  Life, Inspiring, Graduation

  Speech at Harrow School, Harrow, England, 29 Oct. 1941

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

  Winston Churchill

  Being Strong, Encouraging, Courage

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.395, Da Capo Press

  73 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.

  Milton Friedman

  Government, Cost, Half

  16 Copy quote

• The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of the country.

  Milton Friedman

  Country, Mistake, Men

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.50, University of Chicago Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Since the State necessarily lives by the compulsory confiscation of private capital, and since its expansion necessarily involves ever-greater incursions on private individuals and private enterprise, we must assert that the state is profoundly and inherently anti-capitalist .

  Murray Rothbard

  Expansion, Individual, States

  Murray Newton Rothbard (19??). “The Anatomy of the State”, p.42, Ludwig von Mises Institute

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Mean, People, Voting

  22 Copy quote

• Now, I’m not saying that we don’t need rules in society. But the question of who makes the rules and on what basis becomes supremely important. Will the rule-making flow from the matrix of voluntary exchange based on the ethic of serving others through private enterprise? Or will the rules be made and enforced by people wearing guns and bulletproof vests with a license to shock or kill based on minor annoyances?

  Jeffrey Tucker

  Gun, Bulletproof Vest, People

  11 Copy quote

• If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with bank-notes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coal-mines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Real, Filled Up, Digging A Hole

  John Maynard Keynes (2006). “General Theory Of Employment , Interest And Money”, p.116, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

  40 Copy quote

  Show source

• Above all, as the keynote of all Democratic policy, in passing upon any question, let the controlling aim and ambition be to keep the road open for private enterprise and personal initiative.

  John W. Davis

  Ambition, Politics, Initiative

  12 Copy quote

• All the controversialists who have become conscious of the real issue are already saying of our ideal exactly what used to be said of the Socialists' ideal. They are saying that private property is too ideal not to be impossible. They are saying that private enterprise is too good to be true. They are saying that the idea of ordinary men owning ordinary possessions is against the laws of political economy and requires an alteration in human nature.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Real, Men, Law

  4 Copy quote

• Pollution and overuse of resources stem directly from the failure of government to defend private property. If property rights were to be defended adequately, we would find that here, as in other areas of our economy and society, private enterprise and modern technology would come not as a curse to mankind but as its salvation.

  Murray Rothbard

  Technology, Rights, Government

  15 Copy quote

• When shallow critics denounce the profit motive inherent in our system of private enterprise, they ignore the fact that it is an economic support of every human right we possess and without it, all rights would disappear.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Rights, Support, Facts

  9 Copy quote

• We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Kings, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.303

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Donald Trump is not supposed to save jobs one by one. He's supposed to build a sound macro economy in which private enterprises create jobs.

  David Frum

  Jobs, Sound, Economy

  Source: www.cbc.ca

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a very good reason that governments aren't supposed to compete with private-enterprise companies. Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Eminent Domain, Reason

  Source: www.avclub.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

• Private enterprise is not as spectacular nor as easy to see as the socialist way of temporarily diffusing poverty by eating up the seed corn - the tools - which will increase poverty in the long run.

  Raymond C. Hoiles

  Running, Long, Tools

  4 Copy quote