Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

It is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else.

America is a young country, with small inequalities of property, and without manufactures. Few people are here dependent on the rich, for every man has an opportunity of becoming rich himself…the people of New England enjoy an equality of condition unknown in any other part of the world.

Open the doors of opportunity to talent and virtue and they will do themselves justice, and property will not be in bad hands.

Capitalism had arisen through the misuse and exaggeration of certain rights, notably the right of property - the basis of economic freedom - and the right of contract, which is one of the main functions of economic freedom. Therefore, even under Capitalism, so long as the old principles were remembered it was possible to recall the principles whereby Society had once been sane and well ordered.

A free economy is as essential to society as democratic political institutions. A strong market-based economy is the fertile ground for democratic freedoms that we think are important.

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives.

That sort of fundamentalism which treats possession of private property not as a desirable economic and personal asset but as a condition of liberty is a form of primitive religion.

Nobody thinks it necessary to make a law that only a strong-armed man shall be a blacksmith. Freedom and competition suffice to make blacksmiths strong-armed men

No man who owns his own home and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do.

Monopoly and privilege must be destroyed, opportunity afforded, and competition encouraged. This is Liberty's work.

If you're going to have a free economy, one in which the ordinary citizen can dispose of his own income, you're going to have people who dispose of it in an anti-social way.

Ever since the end of Medieval feudalism, and the writings of John Locke, we have understood the importance of being able to buy and sell one's own property, including books and watches, both for reasons of economics and liberty.

I've long believed that one of the mainsprings of our own liberty has been the widespread ownership of property among our people and the expectation that anyone's child, even from the humblest of families, could grow up to own a business or a corporation. Thomas Jefferson dreamed of a land of small farmers, of shopowners, and merchants. Abraham Lincoln signed into law the Homestead Act that ensured that the great western prairies of America would be the realm of independent, propertyowning citizens-a mightier guarantee of freedom is difficult to imagine.

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.

In conditions of private property ... "life-activity" stands in the service of property instead of property standing the service of free life-activity.

And with respect to the mode in which these general principles affect the secure possession of property, so far am I from invalidating such security, that the whole gist of these papers will be found ultimately to aim at an extension in its range; and whereas it has long been known and declared that the poor have no right to the property of the rich, I wish it also to be known and declared that the rich have no right to the property of the poor.

Free market capitalism is far more than economic theory. It is the engine of social mobility-the highway to the American Dream.

The system of private property is the most important guaranty of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.

Respecters of private property are really obligated to oppose much that is done today in the name of private enterprise, for corporate organization and monopoly are the very means whereby property is casting aside its privacy.

Capitalism gives all of us a great opportunity if we seize it with both hands and hang on to it.

The freer the market is and the more respect you have for private property, the better the environment is protected.

The libertarian good society lies... in the maximum dispersion of property compatible with effective production or, as process, in progressive reconciliation of conflicts between equality and efficiency. Such process involves increasing dispersion both of wealth among persons and families and of proximate productional control among enterprises or firms.

We were a land of opportunity. You can never have equal outcomes, but you can have equal opportunity.

So long as free land exists, the opportunity for a competency exists, and economic power secures political power.

Not everybody here is rich. Not everybody here is independently wealthy. Not everybody here is free from any kind of economic concern. We run the gamut here, too. It's the opportunity to escape that that exists here, for very specific reasons. But it's not because the US is where it is. It's not because our DNA is different than anybody else's. It's because of the way we have structured our affairs, our government.