Friedrich List Quotes

Either you believe in markets, or you believe in government.

Government intervention only hurts; it doesn't help.

Conservatives brayed that government should stay out of the private sector; liberals bleated for nationalizing the banks.

It should not be the government running the economy.

Basically, the myth is that America has been founded on the free market; the government has done very little; it has thrived under free trade. But actually, if you look at the history, this is actually the country that has succeeded most with protectionist policies.

The market is no god - it cannot solve every problem.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

It is bad policy to regulate everything... where things may better regulate themselves and can be better promoted by private exertions; but it is no less bad policy to let those things alone which can only be promoted by interfering social power.

However, leaving everything to the market is not necessarily good for society.

I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore. I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role.

The doctrine of state ownership of land … is the exact opposite of the regime of free trade. The doctrine of state ownership should not be allowed to prevail ...

The doctrine of laissez faire is unsafe in politics and unsound in morals.

The private sector, when left alone, can make better decisions than government can.

Regulation of private enterprise and not Government ownership or operation is the course rightly to be pursued in our relation to business.

When the war [World War I] closed ... we were challenged with a peacetime choice between the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of ... paternalism and State Socialism.

The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.

The remarkable fact is not how much government does to control economic activity, but how much it does not do.

The U.S. is not pure capitalism. In fact, there's no place for pure capitalism, unregulated capitalism. We have a regulated system.

We feel that the government should not interfere too much in private sector.

All the evils, abuses, and iniquities, popularly ascribed to businessmen and to capitalism, were not caused by an unregulated economy or by a free market, but by government intervention into the economy.

I certainly think the free-market has failed.

It's our government; just leave us alone and... let the free market create the jobs.

You've got to have free markets with limited government, with the proper amount of regulation where you don't jam entrepreneurship.

I support social market economy. But it only works if there is fair competition.

I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I dont believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.