Faire Quotes & Sayings

I am opposed to all forms of control. I am for an absolute, laissez-faire, free, unregulated economy. — Ayn Rand

Men speake of the faire, as things went with them there. — George Herbert

The policy of letting things alone, in the practical sense that the Government should never interfere with business or go into business itself, is called Laisser-faire by economists and politicians. It has broken down so completely in practice that it is now discredited; but it was all the fashion in politics a hundred years ago, and is still influentially advocated by men of business and their backers who naturally would like to be allowed to make money as they please without regard to the interest of the public. — George Bernard Shaw

He is certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his fellow citizens." That is Adam Smith talking, the apostle of laissez-faire. — Charles Murray

Private property and free trade stand on exactly the same footing, both being essential and indivisible parts of liberty, both depending upon rights, which no body of men, whether called governments or anything else, can justly take from the individual. — Auberon Herbert

Can social progress be made without government?
It's like saying 'can happiness be achieved without the initiation of violence? Can romance be achieved without rape? Can profitability be achieved without theft? Can economic growth be achieved without the mass indebted enslavement and counterfeiting of the federal reserve?'. — Stefan Molyneux

I believe, unlike people that are totally free-market, laissez-faire fundamentalists, that there is an important role that the government can play - one, in providing public goods, whether it's education, health care, or other things, and two, supervising countercyclical policy - stimulus, whether it's monetary, fiscal, or otherwise. — Nouriel Roubini

Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital. — Benjamin Tucker

The whiles some one did chaunt this louely lay;
Ah see, who so faire thing doest faine to see,
In springing flowre the image of thy day;
Ah see the Virgin Rose, how sweetly shee
Doth first peepe forth with bashfull modestee,
That fairer seemes, the lesse ye see her may;
Lo see soone after, how more bold and free
Her bared bosome she doth broad display;
Loe see soone after, how she fades, and falles away.

So passeth, in the passing of a day,
Of mortall life the leafe, the bud, the flowre,
Ne more doth flourish after first decay,
That earst was sought to decke both bed and bowre,
Of many a Ladie, and many a Paramowre:
Gather therefore the Rose, whilest yet is prime,
For soone comes age, that will her pride deflowre:
Gather the Rose of love, whilest yet is time,
Whilest louing thou mayst loued be with equall crime. — Edmund Spenser

We must abandon definitely the laissez-faire theory of political economy, and fearlessly champion a system of increased Governmental control, paying no heed to the cries of the worthy people who denounce this as Socialistic. — Theodore Roosevelt

Someone asked me the other day if I believe in conspiracies. Well, sure. Here's one. It is called the political system. It is nothing if not a giant conspiracy to rob, trick and subjugate the population. — Jeffrey Tucker

In advanced societies it is not the race politicians or the "rights" leaders who create the new ideas and the new images of life and man. That role belongs to the artists and intellectuals of each generation. Let the race politicians, if they will, create political, economic or organizational forms of leadership; but it is the artists and the creative minds who will, and must, furnish the all important content. And in this role, they must not be subordinated to the whims and desires of politicians, race leaders and civil rights entrepreneurs whether they come from the Left, Right, or Center, or whether they are peaceful, reform, violent, non-violent or laissez-faire. Which means to say, in advanced societies the cultural front is a special one that requires special techniques not perceived, understood, or appreciated by political philistines. — Harold Cruse

Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice. Only in this way can we really extend democracy within the Party and at the same time avoid ultra-democracy and the laissez-faire that destroys discipline. — Mao Zedong

Communism, it's a reactive formation derived from capitalism. For this reason it's less flexible and has a lower survival potential. The days of laissez-faire capitalism are completely dead, and the assumptions of nineteenth-century Communism are equally dead, because they were based on laissez-faire capitalism. While there's hardly a trace of it left in capitalist countries, Communism is still reacting to something that's been dead for over a hundred years.
And present-day Communism clings to this outmoded concepts, refusing to acknowledge the contradictions and failures of the Marxist system. Communism doesn't have any capacity to change. Capitalism is flexible, and it's changing all the time, and it's changed immeasurably. Communism apparently are still asserting that they are not changing, they're following the same Marxist principles. We don't have any principles. It's an advantage. — William S. Burroughs

Laissez-faire, supply and demand-one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egotism, to ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause-it is the gospel of despair. — Thomas Carlyle

This is the East Coast, boy. I know they're pretty laissez-faire about dress in your neck of the woods, but back here 52. they don't let you run around in your bathing suit all year long.
Blacks and blues, that's the ticket, blacks and blues ... (Bunny Corcoran to Richard Papen) — Donna Tartt

You see, I am not very good in company. I am clumsy. I am shy. [ ... ] I always say the wrong thing. I upset water jugs. I am unlucky."
"We all do these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, comes later. — Agatha Christie

So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'. — Emma Goldman

Un auteur ga te tout quand il veut trop bien faire. An author spoils everything when he wants too much to do good. — Jean De La Fontaine

The man who accepts the laissez-faire doctrine would allow his garden to grow wild so that roses might fight it out with the weeds and the fittest might survive. — John Ruskin

Not only does the State do the work badly on a domain not its own, bunglingly, at greater cost, and with less fruit than spontaneous organizations, but, again, through the legal monopoly which it deems its prerogative, or through the overwhelming competition which it exercises, it kills or paralyzes these natural organizations or prevents their birth; and hence so many precious organs, which, absorbed, atropic or abortive, are lost to the great social body. — Hippolyte Taine

The orthodox doctrines of economics which were dominant in the last quarter of the nineteenth century had a clear message. They supported laisser faire, free trade, the gold standard, and the universally advantageous effects of the pursuit of profit by competitive private enterprise. — Joan Robinson

Beautiful, seamless upgrade from Twitter today, making functionality smoother and cooler. We didn't have to lobby, didn't have to beg, didn't have to elect a new leader, didn't have to push or protest. Progress is built in to the structure of the mechanism itself: this company exists to please you and me. This is a far better system than any political system on earth. — Jeffrey Tucker

Overt bigotry, Jim Crow laws and policies, government-mandated discrimination, and the belief in black inferiority have virtually disappeared. Laissez-faire racism, instead, involves persistent negative stereotyping of African Americans, a tendency to blame blacks for their own conditions, appeals to meritocracy, and resistance to meaningful policy efforts to ameliorate America's racist social conditions and institutions. Government is formally race neutral and committed to antidiscrimination, and most white Americans prefer a more volitional and cultural, as opposed to inherent and biological, interpretation of blacks' disadvantage status. — Thomas M. Shapiro

Whatever the self-righteous excesses of the environmentalist left, it is impossible to be true to traditional conservative values (to say nothing of the Christian faith conservatives like me profess) and hold laissez faire attitudes about the use and abuse of the natural world. — Rod Dreher

Radicals, on the other hand, want to advance from the jungle of laissez-faire capitalism to a world worthy of the name of human civilization. They hope for a future where the means of economic production will be owned by all of the people instead of just a comparative handful. They feel that this minority control of production facilities is injurious to the large masses of people not only because of economic monopolies but because the political power inherent in this form of centralized economy does not augur for an ever expanding democratic way of life. — Saul Alinsky

Fascism entirely agrees with Mr. Maynard Keynes, despite the latter's prominent position as a Liberal. In fact, Mr. Keynes' excellent little book, The End of Laissez-Faire (l926) might, so far as it goes, serve as a useful introduction to fascist economics. There is scarcely anything to object to in it and there is much to applaud. — Benito Mussolini

Here's something I still can't get over. Amazes and thrills me every time. I'm sitting here and want a certain book. So I search, click, and then I have the book. Every time, my heart does a little leap of joy. What a beautiful world the market is making. — Jeffrey Tucker

The sword's a really nice touch - did you get it at Faire Makers? - but I'm not buying the attitude. It's not really Merit. You should be channeling your inner vampire sex warrior. Like this," she said, then put her hands on her hips, canted out one leg, and smiled sensually. "What?" was all I could think to say. "Maybe a little more cleavage, too." "Cleavage." She nodded, winked. "A vampire sex warrior can never show too much cleavage. — Chloe Neill

Faire language grates not the tongue. — George Herbert

As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals. — Milton Friedman

There are two principles between which there can be no compromise - liberty and coercion. — Frederic Bastiat

They were lounging, in fact, in an almost ostentatious manner, as if to say to passersby like myself, Look uponst my exquisite lounging, foolish mortal, and mourn that you will never lounge with such cosmopolitan savoir faire. — Kevin Hearne

Global laissez-faire is not a conspiracy of corporate America. It is a tragedy - one of several that have occurred in the twentieth century - in which an hubristic ideology runs aground on enduring human needs that it has failed to comprehend. — John Gray

What I wish I had, is that I wish I was a little more Greek, in that I wish I could lose my North American driven attitude and that I could be a little bit more poetic and laissez faire. — Nia Vardalos

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. — H.L. Mencken

A man obsessed: obsessed with perfection, sharing, aesthetics, taste, savoir-faire, and much more. — Alain Ducasse

If I have so far argued that Foucault is a kind of closet liberal and thus deeply modern, I need to be equally critical of evangelical (and especially American) Christianity's modernity and its appropriation of Enlightenment notions of the autonomous self. Indeed, many otherwise orthodox Christians, who recoil at the notion of theological liberalism, have unwittingly adopted notions of freedom and autonomy that are liberal to the core. Averse to hierarchies and control, contemporary evangelicalism thrives on autonomy: the autonomy of the nondenominational church, at a macrocosmic level, and the autonomy of the individual Christian, at the microcosmic level. And it does not seem to me that the emerging church has changed much on this score; indeed, some elements of emergent spirituality are intensifications of this affirmation of autonomy and a laissez-faire attitude with respect to institutions. — James K.A. Smith

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want. — Ludwig Von Mises

Of faire things, the Autumne is faire. — George Herbert

It's Laissez-Faire Until You Get In Deep Shit — Michael Lewis

The treasury could fill old bottles with banknotes and bury them..and leave it to private enterprises on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again. — John Maynard Keynes

Soft and faire goes farre. — George Herbert

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose. — Russell Kirk

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. — Rick Perlstein

He had that combination of savoir-faire with a sort of well-groomed coarseness which is not uncommon in young doctors. — G.K. Chesterton

There is nothing in the basic principles of liberalism to make it a stationary creed; there are no hard-and-fast rules fixed once and for all ... Probably nothing has done so much harm to the liberal cause as the wooden insistence of some liberals on certain rules of thumb, above all the principle of laissez faire. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I am now a fundamentalist American; give me time and I will tell you why individualism, laissez-faire and the slightly restrained anarchy of capitalism offer the best opportunities for the development of the human spirit. — Rose Wilder Lane

[T]he theory of output as a whole, which is what the following book purports to provide, is much more easily adapted to the conditions of a totalitarian state, than is the theory of production and distribution of a given output produced under the conditions of free competition and a large measure of laissez-faire. — John Maynard Keynes

Some colonies were even reputed as being paradises of homosexual debauchery. Indeed, in French, faire passer son brevet colonial, that is, to take one's colonial certificate, mean initiating a young recruit to sodomy, that is, intercourse ,i per anum during which the noviciate would play the role of the insertee. — Chantal Zabus

Faire words makes mee looke to my purse. — George Herbert

For all that faire is, is by nature good;That is a signe to know the gentle blood. — Edmund Spenser

Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity. — Christian Smith

Simplicity is a pleasant thing in children, or at any age, but it is not necessarily admirable, nor is affectation altogether a thing of evil. To be normal, to be at home in the world, with a prospect of power, usefulness, or success, the person must have that imaginative insight into other minds that underlies tact and savoir-faire, morality and beneficence. This insight involves sophistication, some understanding and sharing of the clandestine impulses of human nature. A simplicity that is merely the lack of this insight indicates a sort of defect. — Charles Horton Cooley

The principle of laissez-faire may be safely trusted to in some things but in many more it is wholly inapplicable; and to appeal to it on all occasions savors more of the policy of a parrot than of a statesman or a philosopher. — John Ramsay McCulloch

In reality, government subsidized railroad construction, maintained high protective tariffs and a tight money supply, used its power to crush strikes, and in other ways supported the nation's most powerful economic interests. But the laissez-faire myth still framed political debate. The — Steven J. Diner

Why should I worry, why should I care? And even when I cross that line, I got street savoire faire. — Billy Joel

Redeless (adj.) Not knowing what to do in an emergency. Redeless has a variety of meanings, but this is the one that speaks to me the most. In yet another case of the rare thing enjoying a common word and vice versa, it is interesting to note that redeless has largely (or entirely) fallen by the linguistic wayside, while savoir faire (which originally meant "knowing what to do in an emergency") has survived. Redonation — Ammon Shea

The nearest I have to a rule is a Post-It on the wall in front of my desk saying "Faire et se taire" (Flaubert), which I translate for myself as "Shut up and get on with it. — Helen Simpson

Buy at a faire, but sell at home.
[Buy at a fair, but sell at home.] — George Herbert

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. — John Maynard Keynes

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish. — Frederic Bastiat

One faire day in winter makes not birds merrie. — George Herbert

O Voltaire! O humanity! O idiocy! There is something ticklish in "the truth," and in the SEARCH for the truth; and if man goes about it too humanely - "il ne cherche le vrai que pour faire le bien" - I wager he finds nothing! — Friedrich Nietzsche

The way to a landowner's heart was to tax gently. — Peter Heather

You have a filter, a characteristic way of responding to the world around you. We all do. Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. It creates your innate motivations - are you competitive, altruistic, or ego driven? It defines how you think - are you disciplined or laissez-faire, practical or strategic? It forges your prevailing attitudes - are you optimistic or cynical, calm or anxious, empathetic or cold? It creates in you all of your distinct patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. In effect, your filter is the source of your talents. — Marcus Buckingham

Laissez-faire capitalism is the only social system based on the recognition of individual rights and, therefore, the only system that bans force from social relationships. — Ayn Rand

Batman knew what it was like to trip balls without seriously losing his shit, and that savoir faire added another layer to his outlaw sexiness and alluring aura of decadence and wealth. — Grant Morrison

That is the flip side, you see, to laissez-faire parenting. It succeeds or not, throughout the animal kingdom as it does with humans, in direct relationship to the strength of the offspring. Some of us don't need very much. Some of us need a lot. — Cynthia Rogers Parks

A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment ... is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. — Ayn Rand

Ash should take the ladies, because he's charming."
Ash looked pleased. Jared raised his eyebrows.
"Are you saying that I'm not a charmer?"
"You are very dear to me, but you have all the savoir faire of a wildebeest," Kami told him.
"A wildebeest," Jared repeated.
"A dashingly handsome wildebeest," Kami assured him. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Laissez-faire is finished. The all-powerful market that always knows best is finished. — Nicolas Sarkozy

Thus, the weight of my criticism is directed against the inadequacy of the theoretical foundations of the laissez-faire doctrine upon which I was brought up and for many years I taught — John Maynard Keynes

Laissez-faire, says the professor, when it often means bind and gag that the strongest may work his will. It is a plea for the survival of the fittest - for the strongest male to take possession of the herd by a process of extermination. — Theodore Roosevelt

I clearly believe a lot more than some of my coalition colleagues - Tories - in redistribution and using the tax system for that purpose. I also believe in the government having an active role in the economy, which is having an industrial strategy. I'm not a believer in laissez-faire. — Vince Cable

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid. — Penn Jillette

No daintie flowre or herbe that growes on grownd, No arborett with painted blossoms drest And smelling sweete, but there it might be fownd To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al arownd. — Edmund Spenser

Never was strumpet faire. — George Herbert

I can juggle. I started juggling as a kid. And when I worked at Disneyland, I knew a juggler there named Christopher Faire, and he taught me how to juggle. I used it in my comedy act for a while. — Steve Martin

Capitalism is the only system that can make freedom, individuality, and the pursuit of values possible in practice. When I say 'capitalism,' I mean a pure, uncontrolled, unregulated laissez-faire capitalism - with a separation of economics, in the same way and for the same reasons as a separation of state and church. — Ayn Rand

We do all these things when we are young. The poise, the savoir faire, it comes later. — Agatha Christie

Agile does not mean laissez-faire, flexibility and freedom are based on the well-defined principles. — Pearl Zhu

Laissez-faire capitalism, or anarchocapitalism, is simply the economic form of the libertarian ethic. Laissez-faire capitalism encompasses the notion that men should exchange goods and services, without regulation, solely on the basis of value for value. It recognizes charity and communal enterprises as voluntary versions of this same ethic. Such a system would be straight barter, except for the widely felt need for a division of labor in which men, voluntarily, accept value tokens such as cash and credit. Economically, this system is anarchy, and proudly so. — Karl Hess

He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them. — Ludwig Von Mises

The practice of any art demands more than 'mere savoir faire'. One must not only be in love with what one does, one must also know how to make love. In love self is obliterated. Only the beloved counts. — Henry Miller

I'm pretty earthy; I nursed forever because I liked it and my kids liked it, but at the same time I'm very laissez-faire about stuff like bedtimes and food. — Ana Gasteyer

If theme parks, with their pasteboard main streets, reek of a bland, safe, homogenized, whitebread America, the Renaissance Faire is at the other end of the social spectrum, a whiff of the occult, a flash of danger and a hint of the erotic. Here, they let you throw axes. Here are more beer and bosoms than you'll find in all of Disney World. - Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times — Rachel Lee Rubin

L'homme n'est ni ange ni be" te, et le malheur veut que qui veut faire l'ange fait la be" te. Man is neither angel nor beast.Unfortunately, he who wants to act the angel often acts the beast. — Blaise Pascal

It would have been more to the point, more honest and more Christian, in past decades not to support those who intentionally destroyed healthy life than to rebel against those who have no other wish than to avoid disease. Moreover, a policy of laissez faire in this sphere is not only cruelty to the individual guiltless victims but also to the nation as a whole ... If the Churches were to declare themselves ready to take over the treatment and care of those suffering from hereditary diseases, we should be quite ready to refrain from sterilizing them. — Adolf Hitler

People who can't imagine order without imposition always end up favoring power over liberty. — Jeffrey Tucker

Have you ever noticed how statists are constantly "reforming" their own handiwork? Education reform. Health-care reform. Welfare reform. Tax reform. The very fact they're always busy "reforming" is an implicit admission that they didn't get it right the first 50 times. — Lawrence W. Reed

I found most of my friends quite content to be used as tax-material, even though the sums of money taken from them were employed against their own beliefs and interests. They had lived so long under the system of using others, and then in their turn being used by them, that they were like hypnotized subjects, and looked on this subjecting and using of each other as a part of the necessary and even Providential order of things. The great machine had taken possession of their souls. — Auberon Herbert

The traditional, correct pre-Marxist view on exploitation was that of radical laissez-faire liberalism as espoused by, for instance, Charles Comte and Charles Dunoyer. According to them, antagonistic interests do not exist between capitalists, as owners of factors of production, and laborers, but between, on the one hand, the producers in society, i.e., homesteaders, producers and contractors, including businessmen as well as workers, and on the other hand, those who acquire wealth non-productively and/or non-contractually, i.e., the state and state-privileged groups, such as feudal landlords. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Private property is redundant. "Public property" is an oxymoron. All legit property is private. If property isn't private it's stolen. — Gustave De Molinari

The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat. — George Soros

no man is free who is not a master of himself, that the more liberties we enjoy, the more discipline we need.46 Laissez-faire, — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Gentlemen, the time is coming when there will be two great classes, Socialists, and Anarchists. The Anarchists want the government to be nothing, and the Socialists want the government to be everything. There can be no greater contrast. Well, the time will come when there will be only these two great parties, the Anarchists representing the laissez faire doctrine and the Socialists representing the extreme view on the other side, and when that time comes I am an Anarchist. — William Graham Sumner

I'm fine with whatever comes my way, and whatever doesn't come my way I'm fine with too. I have a very laissez-faire attitude with the whole thing. — Alice Sebold

Of alle the floures in the mede, Than love I most these floures whyte and rede, Swiche as men callen daysies in our toun ... Til that myn herte dye ... That wel by reson men hit calle may The 'dayesye' or elles the 'ye of day,' The emperice and flour of floures alle. I pray to god that faire mot she falle, And alle that loven floures, for hir sake! — Geoffrey Chaucer

It is not an accident that developing countries - virtually the whole of East Asia, for example - view the role of the state in a far more interventionist way than does the Anglo-Saxon world. Laissez-faire and free markets are the favoured means of the powerful and privileged. — Martin Jacques