No They Can't Stossel Quotes & Sayings

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgements and personal information as they delicately balance their interest, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party. — John Stossel

Companies don't get rich hurting their customers. — John Stossel

Nothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away. — John Stossel

Living with the liberals, you get to hear their arguments, fight with them all the time. Keeps me alert. — John Stossel

There's no business that's too small for government to torture — John Stossel

Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else's money? — John Stossel

When action is divorced from consequences, no one is happy with the ultimate outcome. If individuals can take from a common pot regardless of how much they put in it, each person has an incentive to be a free rider, to do as little as possible and take as much as possible because what one fails to take will be taken by someone else. Soon, the pot is empty and will not be refilled -- a bad situation even for the earlier takers. — John Stossel

Liberalism had come to mean spending more on everything-speech police, failed poverty programs that reward dependence, a bigger nanny state telling us we cannot eat fatty foods, workplace roles that stifle opportunity, and absurd environmental regulations. — John Stossel

Natural gas is highly explosive, invisible, poisonous, and odorless. Yet we accept natural gas, even though it kills not two but 400 Americans a year, because it was introduced before we got crazy about risk. We accept coal, even though mining it is nasty and filthy and kills dozens of people every year. By contrast, we're terrified of nuclear energy. Chernobyl, the worst nuclear power disaster ever, killed only 30 people. Some say the radiation may eventually kill others, but even if that's true, natural gas kills more people every year. — John Stossel

The market performs miracles so routinely that we take it for granted. Supermarkets provide 30,000 choices at rock-bottom prices. We take it for granted that when we stick a piece of plastic in a wall, cash will come out; that when we give the same plastic to a stranger, he will rent us a car, and the next month, VISA will have the accounting correct to the penny. By contrast, 'experts' in government can't even count the vote accurately. — John Stossel

People who suffer from anxiety are very good at hiding it. That can often be a contributor to the anxiety because the gap between the internal perception and the external impression can feel so large. — Scott Stossel

No wonder I'm anxious: I'm like Woody Allen trapped in John Calvin. — Scott Stossel

I have, since the age of about 2, been a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses. And I have, since the age of 10, when I was first taken to a mental hospital for evaluation and then referred to a psychiatrist for treatment, tried in various ways to overcome my anxiety. — Scott Stossel

More than a few people, some of whom think they know me quite well, have remarked that they are struck that I, who can seem so even-keeled and imperturbable, would choose to write a book about anxiety. I smile gently while churning inside and thinking about what I've learned is a signature characteristic of the phobic personality: "the need and ability" - as described in the self-help book Your Phobia - "to present a relatively placid, untroubled appearance to others, while suffering extreme distress on the inside."c — Scott Stossel

People acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world. — John Stossel

social phobics are better at picking up on subtle social cues than other people are - but they tend to overinterpret anything that could be construed as a negative reaction. — Scott Stossel

If overpopulation or lack of resources created poverty, then Hong Kong should be poor. Hong Kong has 20 times as many people per square mile as India, and no valuable natural resources. Yet Hong Kong is rich; the average income there is higher than in Great Britain or Canada. This is a recent development. In the 1920s, Hong Kong was as poor as India. But in a relatively short time it became rich because of one key ingredient: economic freedom. — John Stossel

For the social phobic, any kind of performance - musical, sporting, public speaking - can be terrifying because failure will reveal the weakness and inadequacy within. This in turn means constantly projecting an image that feels false - an image of confidence, competence, even perfection. — Scott Stossel

Individuals who rate high on the so-called Anxiety Sensitivity Index, or ASI, have a high degree of what's known as interoceptive awareness, meaning they are highly attuned to the inner workings on their bodies, to the beepings and bleatings, the blips and burps, of their physiologies; they are more conscious of their heart rate, blood pressure, digestive burblings, and so forth than other people are. — Scott Stossel

(Researchers at the University of Iowa have for years been studying a woman, known in the literature as S.M., whose amygdala was destroyed by a rare disease - and who cannot, as a consequence, experience fear.) — Scott Stossel

I never wanted to be an anchor for 25 years, and suddenly I wanted to be one. — John Stossel

I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better. — John Stossel

Give me a break - They say taxes are inevitable, like death. At least death doesn't come every year. — John Stossel

That which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. — John Stossel No They Can T

Good government has to mean less government. — John Stossel No They Can T

When workers can get and equal return for less effort, workers make less effort — John Stossel No They Can T

Life is fairer when individuals are free to make their own decisions — John Stossel No They Can T

A thousand restaurants close every month. They re-open, and that's good for America. Nobody's rescuing them. They employ people, too. If we let them go bankrupt, the factories don't go away, the creative people don't go away. They get employed more productively by others. — John Stossel

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic. — John Stossel

Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway. — John Stossel

When we were scared about 9/11, we federalized the airport security, we spent millions for body armor for dogs in Ohio. All that over-reaction comes from fear and government - bad combination. — John Stossel

The politicians should not tell the people to shut up. — John Stossel

Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic attacks when the cameras start rolling. — Scott Stossel

We all know perfectly well that the man who lives out his life as a consumer," he writes in "The Coming Crisis in Psychiatry," "a sexual partner, an 'other-directed' executive; who avoids boredom and anxiety by consuming tons of newsprint, miles of film, years of TV time; that such a man has somehow betrayed his destiny as a human being. — Scott Stossel

The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians. — John Stossel No They Can T

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you to have foresight. I may not be as empathetic. It's hard to figure out the difference between pathology and personality. — Scott Stossel

People like getting what they think is free stuff from government. — John Stossel

David Boaz has been my guide to the history, economics, and politics of freedom for years. — John Stossel

Fraud will always exist. Enforcement of anti-fraud laws is a useful deterrent, but in the end there's no substitute for investor vigilance. Government regulations provide a false sense of security - and that's worth less than no sense of security at all. — John Stossel

Why, in our 'free' country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying? — John Stossel

Markets are too complex to manipulate beneficially. — John Stossel

But if government is in the business of promoting what is good and suppressing the bad, that is a license for it to stick it's nose into virtually every human activity. — John Stossel No They Can T Pg 32 Threshold Editions New York New York 2012

There are lots of things, including changing the kind of inner dialog, that can mitigate anxiety. And yes, there are people who have the glass half full and glass half empty, and I'm afraid the glass is going to break and I'll cut myself on the shards. — Scott Stossel

All the textbooks talk about avoidance as a classic hallmark of anxiety disorder. So you need a therapist who is sympathetic and understanding but will also push you to do precisely the things that scare you. — Scott Stossel

During high school, I would purposely lose tennis and squash matches to escape the agony of anxiety that competitive situations would provoke in me. — Scott Stossel

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse. — John Stossel