“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.”

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true.

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.

There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.

A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that.

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.

The government doesn’t have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Satisfy a few to please many is bad.

Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they talk like victims.

I’m a bad guitar tuner. I have to pay somebody to tune my guitars.

Nobody likes the bringer of bad news.

It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.

There is nothing more hateful than bad advice.

If bad decorating was a hanging offense, there’d be bodies hanging from every tree!

All I am certain of right now is that I don’t want to go anywhere, and that’s not bad for someone who always used to run.