Quotes & Sayings About Free Enterprise

Capitalists don't want free trade any more than they want whooping cough. Their nature is to conglomerate, homogenate, vertically integrate and dominate until there is no competition. The rules? Screw the rules! They'll rig the game, spit on the ball, bribe the refs, tilt the playing field, pork the cheerleaders and kick free enterprise in the nuts. — Tim Dorsey

Science is an enterprise that should be cherished as an activity of the free human mind. Because it transforms who we are, how we live, and it gives us an understanding of our place in the universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

success and like free enterprise and all — William Gaddis

When individual enterprise is free and unhampered, profit-and-loss calculations set precise limits to a businessman's temptations to expand his services ... a government valuable they may be, have no market price and, therefore, cannot be subjected to profit-and-loss accounting. — Hans F. Sennholz

Business corporations in general are not defenders of free enterprise. On the contrary, they are one of the
chief sources of danger ... Every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that's a different question. We have to have that tariff to protect us against competition from abroad. We have to have that special provision in the tax code. We have to have that subsidy. — Milton Friedman

A free-enterprise economy depends only on markets, and according to the most advanced mathematical macroeconomic theory, markets depend only on moods: specifically, the mood of the men in the pinstripes, also known as the Boys on the Street. When the Boys are in a good mood, the market thrives; when they get scared or sullen, it is time for each one of us to look into the retail apple business. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody. — Andrew Young

Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics. — Henry David Thoreau

As for Christianity's alleged concern with truth, Christian faith is to free inquiry what the Mafia is to free enterprise. Christianity may be represented as a competitor in the realm of ideas to be considered on the basis of its merits, but this is mere disguise. Like the Mafia, if Christianity fails to defeat its competition by legitimate means (which is a forgone conclusion), it resorts to strong-arm tactics. Have faith or be damned - this biblical doctrine alone is enough to exclude Christianity from the domain of reason. — George H. Smith

Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism. — Ralph Nader

At any rate, planning in this sense means all-around planning by the government and enforcement of these plans by the police power. Planning in this sense means full government control of business. It is the antithesis of free enterprise, private initiative, private ownership of the means of production, market economy, and the price system. Planning and capitalism are ut- terly incompatible. Within a system of planning production is conducted according to the government's orders, not according to the plans of capitalists and entrepreneurs eager to profit by best filling the wants of the consumers. — Ludwig Von Mises

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. — Arthur C. Brooks

I've criticized President Bush for his failure to use his veto pen. There's plenty of blame to go around. The question is how to solve problems. It's not bailouts. What made America great? Free markets, free enterprise, manufacturing, job creation. That's how we're gonna do it, not by enlarging government. — Scott Brown

'Socialize' means we turn more of our personal powers over to Big Brother, not free enterprise. — Robert Kiyosaki

This is the free enterprise system. The only place in the world that I can recall where companies never failed was the old Soviet Union. This is what investors do in the free enterprise and capitalism system. And, yes, the free enterprise system can be cruel. But the problem with this administration is that small businesses have been the ones that have suffered the most, the kind that need investors, the kind that don't need the hundreds of pages, the thousands of pages of regulations that continue to plague them and have them continue to hold back on hiring and investment. — John McCain

We very much hope that as we get growth that we can reduce the burden of taxation, that we can reduce income tax and increase the amount of genuine free enterprise and business enterprise ... This is going ... toward the restoration of the personal responsibility, the independence, with every man a property owner, every man a capitalist. — Margaret Thatcher

Fighting for free enterprise means standing up for free markets. The freedom to succeed includes the freedom to fail. We must defend entrepreneurial capitalism against the onslaught of the American Left. — Mike Pence

Of course I believe in free enterprise but in my system of free enterprise, the democratic principle is that there never was, never has been, never will be, room for the ruthless exploitation of the many for the benefit of the few. — Harry S. Truman

The solution to our problems is not more paternalism, laws, decrees, and controls, but the restoration of liberty and free enterprise, the restoration of incentives, to let loose the tremendous constructive energies of 300 million Americans. — Henry Hazlitt

Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it. — Marco Rubio

Conservatism has always meant more to me than simply sticking up for private property & free enterprise. It has also meant defending our heritage & preserving our values. — Gerald R. Ford

We preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe. — Nicholas Von Hoffman

I'm really focused on, is making sure that, for the broadest number of Americans possible, limited government and free enterprise, the principles that have truly helped build our country into an exceptional one, is one that is being sold to and appeals to the broadest number of Americans. — Marco Rubio

I'm not pro-business. I'm pro-free enterprise. — Jeb Hensarling

Reorientation means an emphasis on the dignity of man, not on the sanctity of property. It means the creation of a society where human misery and poverty are repugnant to that society, not an indication of laziness or lack of initiative. The creation of new values means the establishment of a society based on free people, not free enterprise. — Stokely Carmichael

I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse. — Edward R. Murrow

The basic struggle today is not between individualism and collectivism, free enterprise and socialism, democracy and dictatorship. These are only the superficial manifestations of a deeper struggle which is moral and spiritual and involves above all else whether man shall exist for the state, or the state for man, and whether freedom is of the spirit or a concession of a materialized society. — Fulton J. Sheen

The business world worships mediocrity. Officially we revere free enterprise, initiative and individuality. Unofficially we fear it. — George Lois

The free enterprise system has not failed; the financial system has failed. — Tony Blair

A genuine free enterprise system, without state-enforced artificial scarcities, artificial property rights or subsidies, would be like dynamite at the foundations of corporate power. — Kevin Carson

Free enterprise is a natural result of the American form of government, which says in so many words that the more men do for themselves, the less government does for them, the better off we will all be. — Felix Morley

Capitalism is supposedly free enterprise. Supposedly about the free individual. But capitalism itself is so massive that the guy on the street gets caught in paying rent, taxes, and he doesn't own himself at all. — Frank Capra

The slave trade was not controlled by any state or government. It was a purely economic enterprise, organised and financed by the free market according to the laws of supply and demand. Private slave-trading companies sold shares on the Amsterdam, London and Paris stock exchanges. Middle-class Europeans looking for a good investment bought these shares. Relying on this money, the companies bought ships, hired sailors and soldiers, purchased slaves in Africa, and transported them to America. There they sold the slaves to the plantation owners, using the proceeds to purchase plantation products such as sugar, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, cotton and rum. — Yuval Noah Harari

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

You can give your Social Security check to any organization, public or private, or to individuals. You can donate it to your favorite political party. You can give the funds to a student scholarship - for your grandchildren, for example - or to somebody who has a medical need. Or you can invest your government check in free enterprise. — Mark Skousen

Ain't no better place than the US. This is a free enterprise system. You can get whatever you want in the US. — Howlin' Wolf

What we want is not mainly to colonize Nebraska with free men, but to colonize Massachusetts with free men-to be free ourselves. As the enterprise of a few individuals, that is brave and practical; but as the enterprise of the State, it is cowardice and imbecility. What odds where we squat, or bow much ground we cover? It is not the soil that we would make free, but men. — Henry David Thoreau

Somebody will beat both [contents and price] sooner or later because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants. — Kurt Vonnegut

I'm a big believer in free enterprise. If people want to try it, then go for it. — Vince Flynn

There are some things in the world we can't change- gravity, entropy, the speed of light, and our biological nature that requires clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and biodiversity for our health and well-being. Protecting the biosphere should be our highest priority or else we sicken and die. Other things, like capitalism, free enterprise, the economy, currency, the market, are not forces of nature, we invented them. They are not immutable and we can change them. It makes no sense to elevate economics above the biosphere. — David Suzuki

You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard. You beat 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system. — Arthur L. Williams Jr.

Achievement must be made against the possibility of failure, against the risk of defeat. It is no achievement to walk a tightrope laid flat on the floor. Where there is no risk, there can be no pride in achievement and, consequently, no happiness. The only way we can advance is by going forward, individually and collectively, in the spirit of the pioneer. We must take the risks involved in our free enterprise system. This is the only way in the world to economic freedom. There is no other way. — Ray Kroc

If succeeding generations of Americans don't understand the concepts of justice, individual rights, free enterprise, capitalism, sovereignty or national security, there can be no guarantee that those concepts - or others like them - will continue. — George Nethercutt

Gore Vidal, the American writer, once described the American economic system as 'free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor. — Ha-Joon Chang

The virtues of free enterprise can become distorted by greed & delusion. — Allan Lokos

I read recently that 60% of all drugs on the black-market had been put there by the police. No sooner are drugs seized, it seems, than they are recycled onto the streets by the arresting officers! I know our Leader, Mrs Thatcher, is in favour of private enterprise, but this is the free market gone mad! ... Yours for the Market Economy Within Reasonable Limits! — William Donaldson

It's a slow process, but it is scary, because if someone can control your energy sources, they can control you. We are already being told what light bulbs we can and cannot use ... through legislation. We are being forced to fund research into alternative energies sources that are inefficient, and that cause the price of food, energy, and everything else to rise ... through legislation ... rather than allow free enterprise to allocate funds to those energy sources that will survive through good old American innovation! — Mike Thompson

The free enterprise system does not leave people behind. — Marco Rubio

We hold that the ownership of private property is the right and privilege of every American citizen and is one of the foundation stones upon which this nation and its free enterprise system has been built and has prospered. We feel that private property rights and human rights are inseparable and indivisible. Only in those nations that guarantee the right of ownership of private property as basic and sacred under their law is there any recognition of human rights. — John Rarick

Romney is right: free enterprise is on trial. But he's wrong about the question at issue in that trial. It's not whether America will continue to reward risk taking. It's whether an economic system can survive when those at the top get giant rewards no matter how badly they screw up while the rest of us get screwed no matter how hard we work. — Robert B. Reich

Most companies want free enterprise in general because that produces better goods and services and makes people's lives better, but they don't want it in their business. They want protection from competition, they want subsidies, they want the government to pick winners and losers, and they want to be picked as winners, and that's what we're opposing, and that's what drives my whole efforts in policy, and in the political arena. — Charles Koch

The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise. — Henry Hazlitt

We must win the war on poverty by enlisting the greatest weapon ever invented - free enterprise — Jack Kemp

Is advertising moral? It is part and parcel of the American free enterprise system ... I challenge anybody to show any economic system that has done as much for so many in so short a time. — Morris Hite

It's time to believe again in the potential of private enterprise set free from the shackles of over-bearing federal government. — Rick Perry

In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence, — Jamsetji Tata

The Hollywood left insists on painting business persons as arch criminals, even though it's ridiculous. They like to depict free enterprise, capitalism and business leaders as a source of evil and criminality. Somehow they think that will influence enough people to further their left-wing agenda. — James Cook

We stand for the maintenance of private property ... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order. — Adolf Hitler

Free enterprise empowers entrepreneurs who have ideas and imagination, investors who take risks, and workers who hone their skills and offer their labor. — Paul Ryan

Maybe the reason some folks lag behind in our free enterprise system is because they depend too much on the free part and not enough on their own enterprise. — William Greider

We Americans are free to give our opinions and make our voices heard. We work in a free enterprise economy that, for over 200 years, has lifted countless individuals above the circumstances of their birth to achieve their God-given potential. We have been an exceptional country because, here, people are free to practice their faiths and worship God. — Marco Rubio

Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow ... — Ludwig Von Mises

I mean, the country was founded on free enterprise. There's good things about it, and there's obviously bad things about it. — Joan Cusack

Why is our free-enterprise system so strong?- Not because it stands still, frozen in the past, but because it has always adapted to changing realities — Lee Iacocca

I don't understand why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there's nothing public about it; it's an elitist enterprise. 'Rush Limbaugh' is public broadcasting. — Newt Gingrich

Free enterprise capitalism has been the most powerful creative system of social cooperation and human progress ever conceived, but its perception and its role in society have been distorted. — John Mackey

I think I'm basically a liberal Conservative - I believe in low tax, spirit of free enterprise, and in making sure that we as politicians create the framework for business to produce the dosh that we're going to need to pay for the poorest. And the longer I live, the more I think that we all have a duty to each other. — Boris Johnson

I do feel we can create more jobs and opportunities for Jersey City residents, but in the spirit of free enterprise, I do not think it is right to force companies to hire a fixed percentage of local residents. — Vincent Frank

Now, quite apart from the fact that, from the point of view of the Earther, socialism suffers the devastating liability of only exhibiting internal contradictions when you are trying to use it as an adjunct to your own stupidity (unlike capitalism, which again, from the point of view of the Earther, happily has them built in from the start), it is the case that because Free Enterprise got there first and set up the house rules, it will always stay at least one kick ahead of its rivals. — Iain M. Banks

Free enterprise is the sure and so far the only known way of constantly improving the well-being of mankind. — Raymond C. Hoiles

Free enterprise is not a bad idea and has produced art. — Ishmael Reed

If free enterprise becomes a proselytizing holy cause, it will be a sign that its workability and advantages have ceased to be self-evident. — Eric Hoffer

Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite. — Ronald Reagan

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity. — Laurence J. Peter

The devaluation of words and promises regarding free enterprise is, in principle, worse than the devaluation of the rouble — Dmitry Medvedev

I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known. — Barack Obama

Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state. That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals. — Llewellyn Rockwell

No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil. — Peter Drucker

What the Democrats have to understand is that while we do need to reform our regulation and we do need more restrictions, it is true that it is capitalism and free enterprise and companies that create jobs and wealth for every American. — Michael Bloomberg

Conscious evolution of the free enterprise system happens when we realize that neither the heavy handedness of government nor the greed of unregulated enterprise holds the answer to prosperity. It is the radical introspection of both sides leading to a conscious evolution that will save this system we call capitalism. — Said Elias Dawlabani

Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise. — Thomas Jefferson

People who live at subsistence level want first things to be put first. They are not particularly interested in freedom of religion, freedom of the press, free enterprise as we understand it, or the secret ballot. Their needs are more basic: land, tools, fertilizers, something better than rags for their children, houses to replace their shacks, freedom from police oppression, medical attention, primary schools. — Mao Zedong

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing - the truly democratic thing about it - is that you don't even have to be a player to lose. — Barbara Ehrenreich

The oil industry is hardly free to operate as efficiently as it could or to be as responsive to consumer demands as it would like. It has become, in essence, a quasi-state-run enterprise, because it cannot drill, transport, refine, and store fuel without receiving government permission, complying with government regulations, and paying taxes at every level or production. — Mark Levin

It was not for nothing that Adam Smith wrote that "people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices." The romantic notion of politics holds that Big Business is synonymous with capitalism and the archenemy of socialism. In fact, Big Business is reliably against most of what must go into any modern definition of capitalism: free trade, free enterprise, free markets, and the impartial rule of law. Big Business reliably seeks to use the state to seek advantages in trade and to crush smaller (and often more innovative) competitors. — Kevin D. Williamson

While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment. — Barry Goldwater

Populists of the Trump variety and the Sanders variety (who are not in fact as different as they seem) are not wrong to see these corporate cosmopolitans as members of a separate, distinct, and thriving class with economic and social interests of its own. Those interests overlap only incidentally and occasionally with those of movement conservatives - and overlap even less as the new nationalist-populist strain in the Republican party comes to dominate the debate on questions such as trade and immigration. Under attack from both the right and the left, free enterprise and free trade increasingly are ideas without a party. As William H. Whyte discovered back in 1956, the capitalists are not prepared to offer an intellectual defense of capitalism or of classical liberalism. They believe in something else: the managers' dream of command and control. — Kevin D. Williamson

Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

I realize that Kenya and America are very different, but experiences like this warned me that my own favorite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue — Chris Coons

Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation, not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology. — Fred Upton

Competition is the hallmark of a free enterprise economy. For the past thirty years, however, corporate America has been doing everything it can to cut competition, with major corporations merging and consolidating at every opportunity. — Lou Dobbs

I profoundly believer, as Grammen's experience over twenty years has shown, that personal gains is not the only possible fuel for free enterprise. Social goals can replace greed as a powerful motivational force. Social-consciousness-driven enterprises can be formidable competitors for the greed-based enterprises. I believe that if we play our cards right, social-consciousness-driven enterprises can do very well in the marketplace. — Muhammad Yunus

It is a truism that the structure of a society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute sense-there may be totally different cultures using identical tools-but the tools settle the possibilities; you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race limited to a single planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with its basic machines of industry and war requiring a large capital investment, will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free enterprise needs elbow room. — Poul Anderson

Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact that the welfare of business rests upon the welfare of the consumers of a nation; that business or free enterprise will function in a democracy only so long as the democracy functions. — Saul Alinsky

Every system tries to get people to conform to support that system. That goes for communism, socialism, free enterprise, or any other civilization. If they don't demand loyalty, they can't keep their civilization together. So what they do is they teach things that would support an established system. We do not advocate an established system. TVP talks of an emergent system into state of change. So that we always prepare people for the next changes coming ahead. So that people will not cling to the past. — Jacque Fresco

It's a fundamental aspect of the free enterprise system and economics: If there's no penalty associated with increased costs, why not lay on increased costs? — John McCain

The owners and top managers of most news media organizations tend to be conservative and Republican. This is hardly surprising. The shareholders and executives of multi-billion-dollar corporations are not very interested in undermining the free enterprise system, for example, income from offended advertisers. These owners and managers ultimately decide which reporters, newscasters, and editors to hire or fire, promote or discourage. Journalists who want to get a head, therefore, may have to come to terms with the policies of the people who own and run media businesses. — Edward S. Greenberg

The first cities to create friction-free enterprise zones will get a lot of entrepreneurial traction. — Mark Cuban

As events developed, the debate about jobs and energy extraction in general became more divisive. Those at one extreme embraced the industry as an expression of old-fashioned free enterprise. It offered work that built character and brought deserving rewards for those with initiative, whether they be roughnecks working twelve-hour shifts, investors staking their capital, or researchers staking their reputation on the next big discovery. At the other end of the spectrum were those who saw the industry as a relic of grandfather clauses and cronyism that dated to a period of predatory exploitation, when fantastical deals were pitched by door-to-door peddlers, manufacturing waste was buried in lagoons on private property, and unions were nonexistent. The middle ground was occupied by an untold number of consumers used to cheap plentiful energy, and property owners, who had their worries but also were able to calculate how much a mineral rights lease might be worth. — Tom Wilber

Beware of that profound enemy of the free enterprise system who pays lip-service to free competition, but also labels every antitrust prosecution as a persecution. — Franklin D. Roosevelt