Henry Hazlitt Quotes

Capitalism will continue to eliminate mass poverty in more and more places and to an increasingly marked extent if it is merely permitted to do so.

If you go back to 1800, everybody was poor. I mean everybody. The Industrial Revolution kicked in, and a lot of countries benefited, but by no means everyone.

Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

At its very best, the Western model speaks for itself. It's the model that put food on the table. It's the refrigerators. It put a man on the moon.

If history could prove and teach us anything, it would be that private ownership of the means of production is a necessary requisite of civilization and material well-being.... Only nations committed to the principle of private property have risen above penury and produced science, art and literature.

American and world history show that if you want minimal government, you can have it—but only if you want almost everyone in your society also to be a dirt-poor, subsistence farmer. If you want a prosperous, growing modern economy, you need high specialization and a huge, complex, interdependent network of individuals, businesses, research centers and education. And only government has the authority or money to regulate that network and to regularly pump in the targeted funds needed to sustain and grow it.

I've been dedicated to the proposition that there's been no greater wealth-creation system in the history of mankind than the American free-enterprise system.

Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household.

The riches of the rich are not the cause of the poverty of anybody; the process that makes some people rich is, on the contrary, the corollary of the process that improves many peoples want satisfaction. The entrepreneurs, the capitalists and the technologists prosper as far as they succeed in best supplying the consumers.

East Asia confirms the superior capacity of industrial capitalism in raising the material standard of living of large masses of people.

Free enterprise has done more to lift people out of poverty, to help build a strong middle class, to help educate our kids, and to make our lives better than all the programs of government combined.

America has the highest standard of living of any major country in the entire world. To maintain and enhance that standard of living, America should continue to embrace those qualities which have made America great: openness and dynamism. Openness to new technologies, new ideas and new people is America's greatest source of strength.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

There are emerging countries. I mean, there are countries, you know, China, India, and Brazil, and all of these countries that are emerging. They are building homes. They are building - so there is a new lifestyle.

Private ownership of property is vital to both our freedom and our prosperity.

We believe that business is good because it creates value. It is ethical because it is based on voluntary exchange; it is noble because it can elevate our existence, and it is heroic because it lifts people out of poverty and creates prosperity.

When I was a student there in the mid-1990s, they had just created the weekend; depth and individuality were slowly returning after the austere, colorless low of the 1970s. When I returned to live in China from 2005 to 2013, the country was building everything anew.

I want to create economic opportunity at home and abroad. I don't want just one or the other. I want both.

Economies of scale are a good thing. If we didn't have them, we'd still be living in tents and eating buffalo.

Well, as you've said, we cannot expect the people of China not to want to progress, so if you have an opportunity to progress, to develop your economy to a world class economy, it's an aspiration that is natural and that, I welcome.

The market is the creator of social wealth and the wellspring of self-sustaining economic development.

I see little alteration at Lyons since I formerly passed through it. Its manufactories are, nevertheless, flourishing, though less improvement than could be expected is visible in the external aspect of the place.

I unabashedly, unashamedly, unequivocally support the explosion of entrepreneurs in the capitalist system.

At the same time, we are keenly aware that China is still the largest developing country in the world and we need to make long and hard efforts if we are to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects and basically achieve modernization.

Once we started to urbanize, we put ourselves on this treadmill. We traded away stability for growth. And growth requires change.