Top 12 Quotes & Sayings by Lawrence Reed

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact that they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times.

Pessimism is not only unwarranted, it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think the cause is lost, it will be. No one works hard for a cause they think will lose.

By mandating an even higher minimum, the living wage prices even more people out of work. The people who push these cockamamie ideas never seem to ask why any employer would hire someone at $8.23 if that person's services are only valued in the marketplace at, say, $5.00.

Our expensive welfare state is fueled by the destructive notion that 'greed' is when you want to keep your own money but 'compassion' is when you want to take somebody else's.

Anything short of the discipline and honesty of a true gold coin standard will inevitably self-destruct, consuming our wealth and liberties, and nurturing the omnipotent state.

Monetary reform, if it is to be genuine and successful, must sever money and banking from politics. That's why a modern gold standard must have: no central bank; no fixed rations between gold and silver; no bail-outs; no suspension of gold payments or other bank frauds; no monetization of debt; and no inflation of the money supply, all of which have proved so disastrous in the past.

A statesman doesn't try to pull himself up by dragging someboy else down, and he doesn't try to convience people they're victims just so he can posture as their savior.

Marijuana has killed far fewer people than swimming pools; it’s the war against it that does all the violence.

Free men are not equal and equal men are not free.

On the silver screen, capitalists are usually vilified as greedy and heartless, while statists of every stripe are depicted as selfless, romantic idealists who only want to help people.

Money is an invention of the marketplace of exchange, brought into being by traders who discovered that a reliable medium could facilitate trades that were more difficult or even impossible by barter alone.

The greatest influence for good comes from those quiet folks who make morals, not moralizing, their vocation.