Henry Hazlitt Quotes

When a man is pleased with the lot of others, he is dissatisfied with his own, as a matter of course.

People often grudge others what they cannot enjoy themselves.

How unbearable at times are people who are happy, people for whom everything works out.

Some folks rail against other folks, because other folks have what some folks would be glad of.

That which makes people dissatisfied with their condition, is the chimerical idea they form of the happiness of others.

The Englishman is like the dog in the fable. The dog who cannot bear that another dog should have a few bones although the overfed brute is sitting with a bowl full to the brim.

They will not let you have peace, they don't want you to have anything they don't have themselves.

It is the usual consolation of the envious, if they cannot maintain their superiority, to represent those by whom they are surpassed as inferior to some one else.

An envious man grows lean at another's fatness.

The game of discontent has its rules, and he who disregards them cheats. It is not permitted to you to wish to add another's advantages or possessions to your own; you are permitted only to wish to be another.

Everyone is happier if they have someone else to look down on, as well as someone to look up to, especially if they resent both.

You can't stand to see your neighbor getting rich. You know you're smarter than he is and he's doing these things and he's getting rich.

Washington is gripped by crab-in-the-bucket syndrome. And there's no cure in sight. Put a single crab in an uncovered bucket, and it will find a way to climb up and out on its own. Put a dozen crabs in a bucket, and 11 will fight with all their might to pull down the striver who attempts escape.

That some are poorer than others, ever was and ever will be: And that many are naturally querulous and envious, is an Evil as old as the World.

Potter is jealous of potter, and craftsman of craftsman; and the poor have a grudge against the poor, and the poet against the poet.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn't mean what you have isn't beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have - no one is ever 100 per cent like, 'Yes, I'm the bomb dot com - from head to toe!'

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Envy is the central fact of American life.

If we only wanted to be happy, it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, and that is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.

I think it's in human nature to want to have more, to compete with the other and, at some level, to be dissatisfied if someone else has more than you.

Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another's.

There's always going to be someone with a bigger toy than yours.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

The true meaning of the word ‘Equality’ is—“No one better off than I am."