“The free lunch has still to be invented.”

Regulation – which is based on force and fear – undermines the moral base of business dealings. It becomes cheaper to bribe a building inspector than to meet his standards of construction. Protection of the consumer by regulation is thus illusory.

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation.

The need for values is inbred. Their content is not.

American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the word economy.

If I seem unduly clear to you, you must have misunderstood what I said.

I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

Any onset of increased investor caution elevates risk premiums and, as a consequence, lowers asset values and promotes the liquidation of the debt that supported higher asset prices.

Unfortunately, Senator, nobody knows where the next innovative idea is coming from.

The more flexible an economy, the greater its ability to self-correct in response to inevitable, often unanticipated, disturbances and thus to contain the size and consequences of cyclical imbalances.

The recent evidence increasingly suggests that an economic expansion is already well under way, although an array of influences unique to this business cycle seems likely to moderate its speed.

The problem is not lack of regulation but unrealistic expectations. What we confront in reality is uncertainty, some of it frighteningly so…

I’m always amazed that my wife can handle different subjects – one day politics, the next day foreign policy.

Rules cannot take the place of character.

If you get beyond the political rhetoric [and assembled a group to solve Social Security] it would take them 15 minutes. It would take them 15 minutes only because 10 minutes was used for pleasantries.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets.

Fiat money in extremis is accepted by nobody. Gold is always accepted.

My salvation was a free gift. I didn’t have to work for it and it’s better than any gold medal that I’ve ever won.

I’m very proud of the fact that Israel is the one country in a very broad radius that – in which Arabs have free and fair elections. That’s sacrosanct. That will never change. I wasn’t trying to suppress a vote.

We are only so free that others may be free as well as we.

Free men stick their necks out.

Who will free me from hurry, flurry, the feeling of a crowd pushing behind me, of being hustled and crushed?

Only free man are genuinely useful to one another and can form true friendships. And it’s absolutely permissible, by the highest right of Nature, for everyone to employ clear reason to determine how to live in a way that will allow him to flourish.

No duty, however, binds us to these so-called laws, whose corrupting influence menaces what is noblest in our being.

Toxins don’t stop for customs inspections and microbes don’t carry passports. North America became a water and free-trade zone long before NAFTA loosened up the market in goods.