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1. The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
2. And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?
3. There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
4. The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
5. Inflation is taxation without legislation.
6. We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
7. The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
8. Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
9. Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
10. Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
11. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
12. The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
13. The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
14. I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
15. Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
16. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
17. Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
18. The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.
19. I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash — a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.
20. Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.