“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union – like public housing in the United States – look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.”

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.

The word ‘free’ is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with ‘freedom.’ The word ‘fair’ is not used in either of our founding documents.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist.

Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.

Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.

Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.

If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams!

My music definitely determines the direction we’re gonna move in. It’s like music, fashion, hair, makeup.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And you are the one who’ll decide where to go.

God will take care of what you go through. You take care of how you go through it.

Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the freedom of the mountaineer.

You have the power to steer our country in the right direction. Your voice matters more than ever. Use it.

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.