Top 92 Quotes & Sayings by John Stossel - Page 2

Well, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgements and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway.

Why, in our "free" country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying?

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.

Give me a break - They say taxes are inevitable, like death. At least death doesn't come every year.

'Live and let life' used to be a noble approach to life. Now you're considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.

Madoff's scam was small compared to Ponzi schemes the government itself runs: Social Security and Medicare.

Prosperity comes from leaving people free in a legal system that respects their persons and property so they can pursue their dreams while taking responsibility for their actions.

Government has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and given them to another.

It’s not about electing the right people. It’s about a narrowing their responsibilities.

Good government has to mean less government.

The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.

If government were less important in our lives, politicians would have fewer goodies to trade. In return, we'd have more money and more freedom.

Asking someone in the media about liberal bias is like asking a fish about water. 'Huh, what are you talking about? Where is it?'

Saying that government is not the way to solve problems is not saying that humanity cannot solve its problems. What I've finally learned is this: Despite the obstacles created by governments, voluntary networks of private individuals - through voluntary exchange - solve all sorts of challenges.

The market performs miracles so routinely that we take it for granted. Supermarkets provide 30,000 choices at rock-bottom prices. We take it for granted that when we stick a piece of plastic in a wall, cash will come out; that when we give the same plastic to a stranger, he will rent us a car, and the next month, Visa will have the accounting correct to the penny. By contrast, "experts" in government can't even count the vote accurately.

Freedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them.

The politicians should not tell the people to shut up.

Markets are too complex to manipulate beneficially.

Nothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away.

As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and are self-serving.

Wealthier is healthier.

[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want.

Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say conservative the way people say child molester.

Many people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems. Freedom will.

The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians.

The people who have the biggest passion for restricting other people's behavior are the very people we should worry about most. Unfortunately, they keep running for office.

A system that rewards politicians skilled at campaigning - which is the art of creating an illusion - and that puts hundreds of billions of coerced taxpayer dollars at the disposal of the winners will tend to attract men and women with a comparative advantage in manipulation.

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.

Most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy - or even 15 percent of one - doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets - private property, free exchange and the price system - can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.