225 Quotes by Henry Hazlitt

When Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes and asked whether he could do anything for him, Diogenes is said to have replied: ‘Yes, stand a little less between me and the sun.’ It is what every citizen is entitled to ask of his government.

When the government makes loans or subsidies to business, what it does is to tax successful private business in order to support unsuccessful private business.

Theory is the best guide for experiment—that were it not for theory and the problems and hypotheses that come out of it, we would not know the points we wanted to verify, and hence would experiment aimlessly

private loans will utilize existing resources and capital far better than government loans. Government loans will waste far more capital and resources than private loans. Government loans, in short, as compared with private loans, will reduce production, not increase it.

the larger the percentage of the national income taken by taxes the greater the deterrent to private production and employment. When the total tax burden grows beyond a bearable size, the problem of devising taxes that will not discourage and disrupt production becomes insoluble.

Mere inflation-that is, the mere issuance of more money, with the consequence of higher wages and prices-may look like the creation of more demand. But in terms of the actual production and exchange of real things it is not.

The quickest way to detect error in analogy is to carry it out as far as it will go—and further. Every analogy will break down somewhere. Any analogy if carried out far enough becomes absurd.

Another way to find whether an analogy is fallacious is to see whether you can discover a counter analogy. Surely this is the most effective practice in refuting analogy in argument.

It is best to avoid analogy except for purposes of suggestion, or as a rhetorical device for explaining an idea already arrived at by other means.