“The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn’t do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn’t do a thing for them.”

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.

Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.

A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.

Society doesn’t have values. People have values.

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.

I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.

You know there are very few Marxists left in the world they’re all in American universities.

Every person shall be free to do good at his own expense.

With respect to teachers’ salaries …. Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.

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

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.

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

Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That’s not a statement, it’s a definition.

Nothing is so dangerous as that of violence employed by well-meaning people for beneficial objects.

When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.

Workmen’s compensation, hours and conditions of labor are cold consolations, if there be no employment.

97% of the people who quit too soon are employed by the 3% who never gave up.

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero.

To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end.