225 Quotes by Henry Hazlitt

There is actually no limit to the amount of work to be done. Work creates work. What A produces constitutes the demand for what B produces.

It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it.

If, therefore, the X industry is driven out of existence by a minimum wage law, then the workers previously employed in that industry will be forced to turn to alternative courses that seemed less attractive to them in the first place.

It is exports that pay for imports, and vice versa. The greater exports we have, the greater imports we must have, if we ever expect to get paid.

The more ‘adequate’ we make relief, the more people we are going to find willing to get on it and stay on it indefinitely. The more we try to make sure that everybody really in need of relief gets it, the more certain we can be that we are also giving it to people who neither need nor deserve it.

A little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Who subsidizes the consumers will depend upon the incidence of taxation. But men in their role of taxpayers will be subsidizing themselves in their role of consumers. It becomes a little difficult to trace in this maze precisely who is subsidizing whom. What is forgotten is that subsidies are paid for by someone, and that no method has been discovered by which the community gets something for nothing.

Everything we get, outside of the free gifts of nature, must in some way be paid for.

For as Alexander Hamilton pointed out in the Federalist Papers nearly two centuries ago, “A power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.