Alan Greenspan Quotes

I'm pro-free enterprise.

...free enterprise, [is] a term that refers, in practice, to a system of public subsidy and private profit, with massive government intervention in the economy to maintain a welfare state for the rich.

For most of our history, no one dared to tell Americans, 'you don't build that.'

Under capitalism each individual engages in economic planning.

There has been no country with a democratic political sphere, past or present, whose economy has not been dominated by private ownership and market coordination.

I don't like the spirit of socialism – I think freedom is the basis of everything.

I believe in the free enterprise system.

Socialism is the antithesis of opportunity and it's time to reject this failed and dangerous idea once and for all.

I'm a believer in private enterprise, the dignity of work, limited government, and the possibilities of freedom.

Under capitalism everybody is the architect of his own fortune.

Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism - with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church.

Capitalism or market economy is that system of social cooperation and division of labor that is based on private ownership of the means of production.

Capitalism is based on individual rights - not on the sacrifice of the individual to the 'public good' of the collective.

Capitalism encourages entrepreneurs to act with consideration for others even when their ultimate motive is to benefit themselves.

Some critics accuse capitalism of being a selfish system, but the selfishness is not in capitalism - it is in human nature.

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. Everybody acts on his own behalf; but everybodys actions aim at the satisfaction of other peoples needs as well as at the satisfaction of his own. Everybody in acting serves his fellow citizens.

The system of capitalism, of the market economy, is a system of freedom, of justice, of productivity. But these three virtues cannot be separated. Each flows out of the other.

Free enterprise, individual opportunity, limited government. They made America great; only they can keep America strong.

I don't want the technology of the 1950s, but I want the free market of the 1950s.

The freedoms that people have that flow from all civic institutions fundamentally come from the success of a market system.

The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the cold war, is that the engine of capitalism, the individual, is mightier than any collective.

Having seen a non-market economy, I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy.

We're at the crossroads. Down one road is a European centralized bureaucratic socialist welfare system in which politicians and bureaucrats define the future. Down the other road is a proud, solid, reaffirmation of American exceptionalism.

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.

The independence of the economic sphere was a tenet of faith with Liberalism.