130 Free Market Quotes
Following is our list of free market quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about free market capitalism.
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Famous Free Market Quotes
Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. — Murray N. Rothbard
The basis of the free market is anytime you can generate revenue or profit, you've created value in excess of the resources you consume in a society. — Michael Saylor
There is no pure free-market economy. — Jeane Kirkpatrick
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. — Milton Friedman
The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. — Ludwig von Mises
Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world. — Kofi Annan
The free market economy is supposed to be the only path leading to the happiness of humanity by promoting wealth and prosperity, power and influence of nations. — Omar Bongo
It's a market economy. Apparently the demand for great coaches exceeds the supply, so of course the price of good coaches is going to be high. — Michael Gartner
Like all other contracts, wages should be left to the fair and free competition of themarket, and should never be controlled by the interference of the legislature. — David Ricardo
We who live in free market societies believe that growth and prosperity, and ultimately human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down. — Ronald Reagan
A free economy and strong communities honor the dignity of every person, rewarding effort with justice, promoting upward mobility, and building solidarity among citizens. — Paul Ryan
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman
Free market capitalism and trade is the only way to end hunger and poverty across our planet, the empirical evidence is unquestionable. — Javier Milei
Political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. — Ayn Rand
The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people. — Milton Friedman
Hayek Quotes
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top". — Walter E. Williams
As Friedrich Hayek put it: I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop. — Saifedean Ammous
I remember when the wave of Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek and these beautiful Hispanic women came into light, and I looked up to them and I loved them, but I was like, 'Where are Middle Eastern women?' — Kim Kardashian
As Friedrich Hayek put it: I don't believe we'll ever have good money again until we get the thing out of the government's hands, that is, we can't violently take it out of the government's hands, all we can do is somehow cunningly introduce something that they can't stop. — Saifedean Ammous
If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It's not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek. — Karl Rove
I had a dream that Britney Spears rubbed her breasts in my face and Jennifer Lopez gave me head while Salma Hayek sucked my toes and the Olsen twins videotaped everything. I would have kept dreaming it, too, if I hadn't set off the smoke detector. — Donald Fagen
As a result of the efforts of Hayek .. and the many others who share his general outlook, the idea of a centrally planned and centrally administered economy, so popular in the 1930s and early 1940s, has been discredited. — Irving Kristol
I have learned more from Hayek than from any other living thinker, except perhaps Alfred Tarski - but not even excepting Russell. — Karl Popper
.. the publication of Friedrich A. von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom in 1944 is rightly seen as the first shot in the intellectual battle that was to turn the tide in favor of conservatism i.e. non-statist liberalism . — E. J. Dionne
.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek. — Irving Kristol
Free Market Capitalism Quotes
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property. — Milton Friedman
Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. — Friedrich August von Hayek
The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on. — Milton Friedman
There are different ways to organise capitalism. Free-market capitalism is only one of them-and not a very good one at that. — Ha-Joon Chang
The history of capitalism has been so totally re-written that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and free market to developing countries. — Ha-Joon Chang
Free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity! — Lawrence Kudlow
The advantage of a free market is that it allows millions of decision-makers to respond individually to freely determined prices, allocating resources - labor, capital and human ingenuity - in a manner that can't be mimicked by a central plan, however brilliant the central planner. — Friedrich August von Hayek
We do not have free market capitalism in America; we have crony capitalism. There is a huge difference between free market capitalism that democratizes a country and makes us more efficient and prosperous and corporate crony capitalism. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth? — Friedrich August von Hayek
Once you admit that the individual is merely a means to serve the ends of the higher entity called society or the nation, most of those features of totalitarianism which horrify us follow of necessity — Friedrich August von Hayek
Free Economy Quotes
Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. — George C. Marshall
Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire. — Ludwig von Mises
A free society is as much a threat to the intellectual's sense of worth as an automated economy is to the workingman's sense of worth. Any social order that can function with a minimum of leadership will be anathema to the intellectual. — Eric Hoffer
In a free market capitalist system, 'price signals' are everything. Prices are determined by buyers and sellers in the free market, and these prices are broadcast from the exchanges, reaching all corners of the economy - where they are used to transact business. — Max Keiser
The more one considers the matter, the clearer it becomes that redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, as we imagined, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the State. — Bertrand de Jouvenel
Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman
The fact that, in the United States, there are people serving ten-year prison terms for growing marijuana plants in their backyards while Wall Street racketeers, who have defrauded millions of people and destroyed the global economy, walk free is a kind of bizarre hypocrisy that boggles my mind. — Mark Haskell Smith
I believe one of the main roles of Government is to keep our economy free and fair. — Liz Truss
Presidents in both parties - from John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan - have known that our free-enterprise economy is the source of our middle-class prosperity. — Marco Rubio
The government can't create jobs; they'll destroy jobs trying to do it. The government doesn't have any money; all they have is a printing press. We need to free markets to create jobs; if the government wants to help, they should reduce their burden on the economy. — Peter Schiff
Free Enterprise Quotes
Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. — Ronald Reagan
From working in my mum's tiny chemist shop to my experience building large businesses, I have seen how we should support free enterprise and innovation to ensure Britain has a stronger future. — Rishi Sunak
The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives. — Arthur C. Brooks
You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard. You beat 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system. — Arthur L. Williams, Jr.
Of course I believe in free enterprise but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. — Harry S. Truman
In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence. — Jamsetji Tata
A people armed and free, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition and is a bulwark for the nation against foreign invasion and domestic oppression. — James Madison
While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment. — Barry Goldwater
Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production. — Joseph A. Schumpeter
Provided that societies stay mindful of the challenges that capitalism creates and never forget the paramount importance of inclusion and equal opportunity, we can and should celebrate the miracle of free enterprise-and the billions of souls it has helped free from desperate poverty. — Dalai Lama
Market Economy Quotes
Globalization can be very unjust and unfair and unequal, but these are matters under our control. Its not that we dont need the market economy. We need it. But the market economy should not have priority or dominance over other institutions. — Amartya Sen
A fundamental contradiction does not exist between socialism and a market economy. — Deng Xiaoping
The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. — Ludwig von Mises
In the domain of cops and robbers, an interdiction serves to structure a black market and a shadow economy. — William Irwin Thompson
I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy. — Garry Kasparov
Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly. — Vaclav Havel
So in Asia I want to make - I want to succeed to make a model of what success, practicing democracy, and market economy. Then that will give a good influence over Asian countries. — Kim Dae-jung
We, the Social Democrats, are convinced that capitalism needs to be tamed a second time. The first time we achieved that in Germany for many decades with the social market economy. That is no longer enough. Now we need to do it in Europe and even globally. — Sigmar Gabriel
Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy. — Esther Dyson
Our economy isn't going to recover until the housing market finds its footing. — Mark Zandi
Free Trade Quotes
Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty. — Chief Joseph
NAFTA and GATT have about as much to do with free trade as the Patriot Act has to do with liberty. — Michael Badnarik
Politicians of both parties told us that free trade with Asia and Latin America would spur economic growth, and maybe it did somewhere else. — James David Vance
The progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope, as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist — Danny Glover
You don't need a treaty to have free trade. — Murray Rothbard
I have opposed the Communist cold war line ever since, both by public utterance and by private help to trade unionists breaking free from the Communist influence. — Earl Browder
Protectionism is a misnomer. The only people protected by tariffs, quotas and trade restrictions are those engaged in uneconomic and wasteful activity. Free trade is the only philosophy compatible with international peace and prosperity. — Walter Block
Free trade is the serial killer of American manufacturing and the Trojan Horse of world government. It is the primrose path to the loss of economic independence and national sovereignty. Free trade is a bright, shining lie. — Pat Buchanan
The history of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land. America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life. We ought to be proud of it! — Hubert H. Humphrey
Trade protection accumulates upon a single point the good which it effects, while the evil inflicted is infused throughout the mass. The one strikes the eye at a first glance, while the other becomes perceptible only to close investigation. — Frederic Bastiat
People Writing About Free Market
| Name | Quotes | Likes |
|---|---|---|
 Milton Friedman |
372 | 3653 |
 Michael Saylor |
69 | 1 |
 Jeane Kirkpatrick |
53 | 300 |
 Ludwig von Mises |
541 | 3009 |
 Kofi Annan |
301 | 3612 |
 Omar Bongo |
35 | 272 |
More Free Market Quotes
That's not for me to decide, that's for the voters to decide and many of them are saying, this slavish adherence to the cult of the free market that the Republican party has followed for decades isn't what we want anymore. That's not a question for me, that's up to them. — Milo Yiannopoulos
Racial, globalist free markets hasn't worked for everybody in America - hasn't worked for at least the white working, or lower middle class in America don't perceive that it has worked very well for them. It hasn't served everybody, and a bit of protectionism - for many American voters - seems like quite an attractive thing. — Milo Yiannopoulos
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. — Milton Friedman
The case for bitcoin as a cash item on a balance sheet is very compelling for anyone with a time horizon extending beyond four years. Whether or not fiat authorities like it, bitcoin is now in free-market competition with many other assets for the world’s cash balances. It is a competition bitcoin will win or lose in the market, not by the edicts of economists, politicians, or bureaucrats. If it continues to capture a growing share of the world’s cash balances, it continues to succeed. As it stands, bitcoin’s role as cash has a very large total addressable market. The world has around $90 trillion of broad fiat money supply, $90 trillion of sovereign bonds, $40 trillion of corporate bonds, and $10 trillion of gold. Bitcoin could replace all of these assets on balance sheets, which would be a total addressable market cap of $230 trillion. At the time of writing, bitcoin’s market capitalization is around $700 billion, or around 0.3% of its total addressable market. Bitcoin could also take a share of the market capitalization of other semihard assets which people have resorted to using as a form of saving for the future. These include stocks, which are valued at around $90 trillion; global real estate, valued at $280 trillion; and the art market, valued at several trillion dollars. Investors will continue to demand stocks, houses, and works of art, but the current valuations of these assets are likely highly inflated by the need of their holders to use them as stores of value on top of their value as capital or consumer goods. In other words, the flight from inflationary fiat has distorted the U.S. dollar valuations of these assets beyond any sane level. As more and more investors in search of a store of value discover bitcoin’s superior intertemporal salability, it will continue to acquire an increasing share of global cash balances. — Saifedean Ammous
A scientist or an experimentalist gets feedback from Mother Nature, and an entrepreneur gets feedback from a free market in which people vote with their money and time. Those are much better predictors. — Naval Ravikant
The War on Drugs employs millions - politicians, bureaucrats, policemen, and now the military - that probably couldn't find a place for their dubious talents in a free market, unless they were to sell pencils from a tin cup on street corners. — L. Neil Smith
The free market argument for limiting free speech ie build your own platform if you don't like our moderation evaporated as soon as Apple and Google banned Parler from their app stores. There's no opportunity to build an alternative if the OS duopoly prevents it. — David O. Sacks
Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun. — Grover Norquist
We can't leave everything to the free market. In fact, climate change is, I would argue, the greatest single free-market failure. This is what happens when you don't regulate corporations and you allow them to treat the atmosphere as an open sewer. — Naomi Klein
... As long as you continue to tar social democracy with all the crimes of communism, I feel equally entitled to tar the free market with the crimes of slavery, segregation, colonialism and genocide; piss me off and I'll add fascism and the Nazis. — Greg Erwin
Money is a messaging system that is much higher signal than speech, so free speech will inevitably be undermined in any society lacking a free market for money, as proceeds stolen through inflation are inevitably used to fund censorship, propaganda, and other psychological operations. — Robert Breedlove
What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself. — Milton Friedman
More than anything else, let me be clear - we need to be willing to fight for freedom, and free markets, and traditional moral values. That's what the American people want to see this movement and this party return to. — Mike Pence
You cannot take away freedom to protect it, you cannot destroy the free market to save it, and you cannot uphold freedom of speech by silencing those with whom you disagree. To take rights away to defend them or to spend your way out of debt defies common sense. — Glenn Beck
The free market promotes self-worth, self-sufficiency, shared values, and honest dealings, which enhance the individual, the family, and the community. It discriminates against no race, religion, or gender. — Mark Levin
The younger generation of today has grown up in a world in which in school and press the spirit of commercial enterprise has been represented as disreputable and the making of profit as immoral, where to employ a hundred people is represented as exploitation but to command the same number as honorable. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits. — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-faire was enforced by the state. — Karl Polanyi
I [have big plans]. Promoting freedom around the world, particularly with women in the Middle East. Working on global disease. Working on accountability in public schools. And advocating for a free marketplace and an economic environment in which businesses can innovate and create jobs. — George W. Bush
In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. — Matt Taibbi
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