Leonard Read

Freedom is the key to Godliness

The proper function of government does not include government's intrusion into economic activities;..it should

I have yet to find a person who does not agree with this: "It is wrong for me to control you or for you to control me." Then I say, "It is wrong for two of us to control you." Agreed. Then I say, It is wrong for 150 million of us to control you." Agreed. But the BUT arises as soon as most persons begin to reason from the general to the particular. The penetration of the social cancer is so deep that they can no longer see how persons could be educated, or roads could be built, or the mails delivered, or prosperity made possible, short of coercion, the thing they admit to be evil.

Clever phrases or cliches such as "Human rights are above property rights" or "What would you do, let them starve?" have influenced untold numbers of Americans to vote for charlatans and to advocate legal thievery.

Socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself can never create. Socialism is operative only in wealth situations brought about by motes of production other than its own. Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth.

Why do tourists gape so eagerly at this sort of thing [Château de Fontainebleau]? Most people, I believe, aspire to what these agents and sycophants of the state achieved: ease without work, services for themselves by edict, power and position by wishing plus, of course, a little intrigue.

Communism, socialism, the welfare state, et cetera, are essentially one and the same thing.

There is really nothing that can be done except by an individual. Only individuals can learn. Only individuals can think creatively. Only individuals can cooperate. Only individuals can combat statism.

Whenever government assumes responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of citizens, the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is politically expedient to cover them by direct tax levies.

Once an activity has been socialized, it is impossible to point out, by concrete example, how men in a free market could better conduct it. How, for instance, can one compare a socialized post office with private postal delivery when the latter has been outlawed?

When all the verbiage is cut through and all the shouting dies down, what really is it FEE argues for? Just this: You preposterous egotists! Get the hell off the backs of folks who know as much as you but who know they don’t know much. Leave us with ourselves and our Creator. The Creator, not you, is our source of creative action. Sure, all of us will organize to protect this creative relationship but, other than this, get gone! Leave the creative relationship be, you would-be gods! We are no less fallible than you but you are dizzy.

Coercion doesn't change from evil to good if employed by two against one or by 200 million against one. Arithmetic has no bearing on moral principles.

All creative thought and creative action is strictly personal. A committee, any collective, cannot think. It cannot act creatively. It can only act destructively. It can exercise brute force.

The more complex our economy, the more we should rely on the miraculous, self-adapting processes of men acting freely. No mind of man nor any combination of minds can even envision, let alone intelligently control, the countless human energy exchanges in a simple society, to say nothing of a complex one.

At one end of the intellectual spectrum are the wise, those who know they don't know much; and on the other end are the egotists, those who have little, if any, awareness of how little they know.