Leonard Read Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Leonard Read's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Leonard Read's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 46 quotes on this page collected since September 26, 1898! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • Assume that a surgeon has discovered how to do brain surgery, that he can do only one a month, that 1,000 persons a year need such an operation if they are to survive. How is the surgeon's scarce resource to be allocated? Charge whatever price is necessary to adjust supply and demand, say $50,000! 'For shame,' some will cry. 'Your market system will save only wealthy people.' For the moment, yes. But soon there will be hundreds of surgeons who will acquire the same skill; and, as in the case of the once scarce and expensive 'miracle drugs,' the price then will be within reach of all.

    People  
  • Is it not obvious that the more complex an economy, the more certainly will governmental control of productive effort exert a retarding influence?

  • The solution to this problem [welfare-statism] must take a positive form: the restoration of a faith in what free men can accomplish.

    Men  
  • Whenever government assumed responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies.

  • No one has more than scratched the surface when it comes to understanding and explaining the miracle of the market.

  • Politicians, bureaucrats, editors, new commentators, 'economists' teachers,' and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies...these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs - and don't know it!

  • There is no moral distinction between petty thievery and 'from each according to ability, to each according to need.'

  • A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!

    "The Complete Works of Leonard E. Read". 1976.
  • If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency - so much 'security' that 'the secured' are without resources - helpless and hopeless.

  • It should be noted that people in the free market rarely bear false witness; integrity is the rule. The morning mile, phone calls, planes the airlines buy, autos by the millions - no one could list the instances - are as represented. We have daily, eloquent, enormous testimony that the Ten Commandments can be and are observed by fallible human beings. Contemporary politics is the most glaring of all exceptions.

    "The Complete Works of Leonard E. Read". 1976.
  • The right way is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon - when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty.

  • The American people are becoming more and more afraid of, and are running away from, their own revolution.

    People  
    Leonard E. Read (1990). “The freedom philosophy”, Foundation for Economic Education
  • In market terms, one is entitled to what others will offer in willing exchange. That is all!

  • Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth.

    "Anything That's Peaceful". Book by Leonard Read, 1964.
  • Governments resort to inflation with popular support because the people apparently are naïve enough to believe that they can have their cake and eat it, too.

    Leonard E. Read (1990). “The freedom philosophy”, Foundation for Economic Education
  • What precisely is this disease that causes inflation and all these other troubles? It has many popular names, such as socialism, communism, state interventionism, and welfare statism.

    Leonard E. Read (1990). “The freedom philosophy”, Foundation for Economic Education
  • If we remove the hope of profit as a means to alleviate misfortune - poverty, illness, misery, disaster - we shall increase our misfortunes and make them permanent.

  • I can remember the time when, if we wanted a house or housing, we relied on private enterprise. In fact, Americans built more square feet of housing per person than any other country on the face of the earth. Despite that remarkable accomplishment, more and more people are coming to believe that the only way we can have adequate housing is to use government to take the earnings from some and give these earnings, in the form of housing, to others.

    Country  
  • The libertarian can have no truck with 'left' or 'right' because he regrets any form of authoritarianism - the use of police force to control the creative life of man.

    Men  
  • There is no moral distinction between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax.

  • I would like to suggest to you that the extent to which government in America has departed from the original design of in habiting the destructive actions of man and invoking a common justice; the extent to which government has invaded the productive and creative areas; the extent to which the government in this country has assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of our people is a measure of the extent to which socialism has developed here in this land of ours.

  • The welfare state destroys the market mechanisms - lessens free choice and willing exchange. Simultaneously creating unnatural specializations, it must, granted statism's premise, resort to welfarism; that is, it must assume the responsibility for the people's welfare: their employment, their old age, their income, and the like. As this is done, man loses his wholeness; he is dispossessed of responsibility for self, the very essence of his manhood. The more dependent he becomes, the less dependable!

  • We need only take our heads out of the sand to see clearly that interventionism not only has failed to provide the promised something-for-nothing, but has led to all sorts of undesirable consequences. Indeed, many are just beginning to realize that we are moving towards disaster even though we have been on a wrong heading for decades.

  • True, the free market ignores the poor precisely as it does not recognize the wealthy - it is 'no respecter of persons'

  • The more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.

    Men  
    "Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism". Book by Leonard Read, July 28, 2015.
  • Under both the welfare state and communism, the responsibility for the welfare, security, and prosperity of the people is presumed to rest with the central government.

  • There is no greater dishonesty than man effecting his own private gains at the expense of others.

    Men  
  • There could be no greater error than to conclude that statism caused prosperity.

  • The system of plunder derives much of its support from individuals who do not subscribe to socialism but who say, 'We're paying for it, so we might as well get our share'

  • The advancement of freedom is not a matter of who wields political power over creative actions; rather, it depends upon the disassembling of such power.

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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 46 quotes from the Leonard Read, starting from September 26, 1898! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!