197 Quotes by Harry Browne

If I could give you just one thing, I’d want it to be a simple truth that took me many years to learn. If you learn it now, it may enrich your life in hundreds of ways. And it may prevent you from facing many problems that have hurt people who have never learned it.The truth is simply this:No one owes you anything.

The free market punishes irresponsibility. Government rewards it.

Government programs didn’t arise because the people demanded them or because the free market was unable to provide needed services. They arose because the politicians found them to be a convenient way to buy votes with other people’s money, a convenient way to enlarge their own power, a convenient way to reward their political cronies, and a convenient way to keep people dependent on government.

A free and prosperous society has no fear of anyone entering it. But a welfare state is scared to death of every poor person who tries to get in and every rich person who tries to get out.

Politicians are notoriously economically illiterate. And even when they know what would be the right thing, we don't really expect them to do it.

The income tax is the biggest single intrusion suffered by the American people. It forces every worker to be a bookkeeper, to open his records to the government, to explain his expenses, to fear conviction for a harmless accounting error. Compliance wastes billions of dollars. It penalizes savings and creates an enormous drag on the U.S. economy. It is incompatible with a free society, and we aren’t libertarians if we tolerate it.

The important thing is to concentrate upon what you can do - by yourself, upon your own initiative.

You are where you are today because youve chosen to be there.

When people do things for you, it's because they want to - because you, in some way, give them something meaningful that makes them want to please you, not because anyone owes you anything.