Free Market Economics Quotes

Ask me not, 'Are you rightwing,' but ask me 'Are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment?' Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the 'Wealth of Nations' and the 'Theory of Moral Sentiments,' then I'm rightwing.

With each step away from communist constructivism to Hayekian capitalism, China has been richly rewarded.

They say that open markets are the solution to everything and, if left alone, the invisible hand will solve all problems. Sadly, the reason the invisible hand often appears invisible is that, quite often, it is not there.

Although floating and fixed rates appear dissimilar, they are members of the same freemarket family. Both operate without exchange controls and are free-market mechanisms for balance-of-payment adjustments.

I believe in what I believe, and I think after all these years I've heard a lot of arguments, and I'm convinced by the superiority of the arguments that are made on the conservative side. I think that's a better way to run a society.

What free-market economists are not telling us is that the politics they want to get rid of are none other than those of democracy itself. When they say we need to insulate economic policies from politics, they are in effect advocating the castration of democracy.

What America needs is not Robin Hood but Adam Smith.

In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

With Anglo-American capitalism increasingly under attack, those who believe in the power of free markets and enterprise to create wealth and social progress must stand up and be counted and champion our way of life.

During the 1980s, many people mistook Thatcherism and Reaganism - actually a wild form of liberalism - for conservatism.

Our friends on the left never met an anti-Communist they liked.

I didn't become a Tory just to become part of a managerial group who wanted to run the country... I want to see popular free-market Conservatism where barriers are broken down, people have got more opportunities but keep more of their own money.

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

.. the most intelligent defender of capitalism in the modern period is Friedrich Hayek.

Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition.

As a believer in the free market, the sooner you have people with a job - the better chance they have a job, the sooner they are employed - the sooner they become consumers. And the sooner they become consumers, the sooner they become deciders about their own health care decisions.

Manufacturing and commercial monopolies owe their origin not to a tendency imminent in a capitalist economy but to governmental interventionist policy directed against free trade and laissez faire.

Watching the Commons tribute to Margaret Thatcher was like being suffocated inside a gigantic sticky toffee pudding, but one with nasty bogeys planted inside. There was much of the 'Margaret Thatcher who was lucky enough to know me,' especially from her own side of the House.

I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.

John Major put the 'er' back into Conservative, David Cameron's put the 'Con' into Conservative - and Norman Lamont put the 'vat' into Conservative!

Scratch the surface at conservative think tanks and universities that house free-market economists, and it's not hard to find proponents of a carbon tax.

From the start of her leadership of the Conservative party in February 1975, Thatcher's style seemed shrill and uncompromising, and she became an easy object of mockery. When she left office nearly 16 years later, she was a widely recognised, but clearly still highly controversial, figure.

One of the most important things liberals don't understand about conservatism, obscured by too much lazy talk about conservatism's various 'wings,' is that its tenets form a relatively organic base for its adherents, where 'traditional morality' serves the interests of laissez-faire economics and vice-versa.

The Republicans have a very traditional focus over and over again whether or not it's worked.

Milton Friedman. Friedman had a solid MV = PQ doctrine from which he deviated very little all his life. By the way, he's about as smart a guy as you'll meet. He's as persuasive as you hope not to meet.