Vincent de Gournay Quotes

Here we are, then, once more back at the old doctrine - Laissez faire. Let us translate it into blunt English, and it will read, Mind your own business. It is nothing but the doctrine of liberty. Let every man be happy in his own way.

Government can do best by simply getting out of the way.

The best legislative initiative - is the absence of one.

It is not the policy of the government in America to give aid to works of any kind. They let things take their natural course without help or impediment, which is generally the best policy.

I want a government that does nothing.

The best kind of politician is the one who doesn’t do anything—he can’t screw things up.

Imagine a libertarian president ending impediments to free markets.

I am not someone who tends to advocate for increased government involvement in the private sector.

In Poland we still believe - and this certainly applies to my government - that greater competitiveness, and greater growth and savings are possible in an economy which is as sparely regulated as possible, where freedom, competition and private ownership are key values.

Enquire and examine, whether a greater freedom of trade and an exemption from the restraint of exclusive companies, would not be beneficial.

That government is best which governs least.

We should rely on the markets to move on their own.

I believe in markets before mandates.

Markets are smart and governments are dumb.

Let business oversee itself.

The Government must get out of the "protective" business and the "subsidy" business and the "improvement" and the "development" business. It must let trade, and commerce, and manufactures, and steamboats, and railroads and telegraphs alone. It cannot touch them without breeding corruption.

The best thing that governments can do is get out of business. When governments interfere less, managers can do their jobs better.

The left must shelve its centralist megalomania and drop the obsessive conviction that the State can effectively control the whole economy … The left must stand up for consumer rights, free investment decisions, the free disposal of assets, and a decentralized decision making process

Competition has brought about two great opposing opinions; one that Government should do nothing, the other that it should do everything. The first arises from the contemplation of the immense wealth heaped up under a system of unimpeded individual action, and of the extraordinary folly and selfishness of the customs and legislation that controlled such action in the past. The second arises from the sufferings which unimpeded individualism has brought upon the working classes, who cry out that Government is bound to protect them from misery and starvation

Government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way.

We have gotten to the point where everything the government does is counterproductive; the conclusion, of course, is that the government should do nothing at all, that is, should retire quickly from the monetary and economic scene and allow freedom and free markets to work.

The Jacksonians were libertarians, plain and simple. Their program and ideology were libertarian; they strongly favored free enterprise and free markets, but they just as strongly opposed special subsidies and monopoly privileges conveyed by government to business or to any other group.

We need to move back toward a free market.

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

Government intervention only hurts; it doesn't help.