John Stossel Quotes

The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization.

The human species was not born into a market economy. Bees won't sell you honey if you offer them an electronic funds transfer. The human species imagined money into existence, and it exists - for us, not mice or wasps - because we go on believing in it.

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

From a systematic standpoint, I think that capitalism is the best system. I can spend a lot of time explaining why I like communism, but it is actually not a good solution. Nor is socialism. So, capitalism is the right model.

I think the market is always going to be around. The goal is not to say, let's get rid of the market, because the market does render a huge number of services, and I don't want to have a fight about the price of something every time I buy a book or a bottle of water.

Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.

I used to think that capitalism was human nature. Now I know that it is culture.

Capitalism carries in itself war, like clouds carry rain.

After Emancipation, it was the plain duty of some one to assume this group leadership and training of the Negro laborer. I will not stop here to inquire whose duty it was—whether that of the white ex-master who had profited by unpaid toil, or the Northern philanthropist whose persistence brought on the crisis, or the National Government whose edict freed the bondmen; I will not stop to ask whose duty it was, but I insist it was the duty of some one to see that these workingmen were not left alone and unguided, without capital, without land, without skill, without economic organization, without even the bald protection of law, order, and decency,—left in a great land, not to settle down to slow and careful internal development, but destined to be thrown almost immediately into relentless and sharp competition with the best of modern workingmen under an economic system where every participant is fighting for himself, and too often utterly regardless of the rights or welfare of his neighbor.

Although capitalism is, in principle, strongly individualistic, it has contributed in practice to reinforce the trend to integration, because it has made our lives more and more interdependent.

Free markets work better when information is available.

Any nation's right to form a government and an economic system of its own choosing is inalienable.... Any nation's attempt to dictate to other nations their form of government is indefensible.

For many, perhaps most, Americans, markets are sacrosanct. Most people in the United States cannot even envision a society that doesn't revolve around an untrammeled market.

You wonder sometimes how our government puts on its pants in the morning.

If ever this vast country is brought under a single government, it will be one of the most extensive corruption, indifferent and incapable of a wholesome care over so wide a spread of surface. This will not be borne, and you will have to choose between reform and revolution. If I know the spirit of this country, the one or the other is inevitable.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

It is not uncommon to suppose that the free exchange of property in markets and capitalism are one and the same. They are not. While capitalism operates through the free market, free markets don't require capitalism.

I have no patience for injustice, no tolerance for government incompetence of which there is so much. No sympathy for leaders who fail their citizens. When innocent people suffer, because our political system lacks the will, or the courage, or the basic decency to enforce our laws – or still worse, has sold out to some corporate lobbyist for cash – I am not able to look the other way.

Whatever men live for, today most live only because of the market order.

The government increasingly resembles somebody who is trying to give the kiss of life to a corpse.

Capitalism survives by forcing the majority, whom it exploits, to define their own interests as narrowly as possible. This was once achieved by extensive deprivation. Today in the developed countries it is being achieved by imposing a false standard of what is and what is not desirable.

I'm convinced more than ever that capitalism, with its technological development, has not been an advance toward freedom but has been an enormous setback of freedom.

It takes our government an awful lot of time to do most things competently, and that's part of the problem here.

If Wall Street paid a tax on every “game” they run, we would get enough revenue to run the government on.

That is why we may say that the historical development of capitalism has involved the thrust towards the commodification of everything.