Stossel Quotes & Sayings

[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want. — John Stossel

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

I saw how the regulation I called for made things worse, didn't help consumers and simple competition was better. And I started praising business and occasionally criticizing regulation. — John Stossel

Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say 'conservative' the way people say 'child molester.' — 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

He real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough? — John Stossel

The one thing I've learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be. — John Stossel

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

I won't ever got to a place that's racist, and I will tell everybody else not to and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist. — John Stossel

It's not about electing the right people. It's about a narrowing their responsibilities. — 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

Take away the government's monopoly, and private groups will do it better. — John Stossel

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck
paddling, paddling, paddling. — Scott Stossel

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed. — Scott 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

Even as economic and political freedoms have advanced enormously and generated huge benefits for humanity, they've also created a great deal of anxiety because every time you have to make a choice, there's anxiety about making the wrong one. — 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

When I was 5 and my sister was 3, we went on a family trip, and she ate cheese off the floor at an airport. My mother, a germaphobe, got very upset. My sister, of course, got a stomach virus, and ever since then, I have an aversion to cheese. — Scott Stossel

But none of these treatments have fundamentally reduced the underlying anxiety that seems woven into my soul and hardwired into my body and that at times makes my life a misery. As the years pass, the hope of being cured of my anxiety has faded into a resigned desire to come to terms with it, to find some redemptive quality or mitigating benefit to my being, too often, a quivering, quaking, neurotic wreck. — Scott Stossel

It is a fact - I say this from experience - that being severely anxious is depressing. Anxiety can impede your relationships, impair your performance, constrict your life, and limit your possibilities. — Scott Stossel

Patrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolutely safety or give me death.' America is supposed to be about freedom. — John Stossel

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

Many nights, I would begin the evening fueled by caffeine and nicotine, which I needed to propel me out of torpor and hopelessness - only to overshoot into quaking, quivering anxiety. — Scott Stossel

All our rights are gradually eroded as government gets bigger. — John Stossel

The people who have the biggest passion for restricting other people's behavior are the very people we should worry about most. Unfortunately, they keep running for office. — John Stossel

We have all kinds of government compensation systems that are much more efficient than the lawyers. — John Stossel

As a free person, I ought to be allowed if I'm dying to take something. — John Stossel

An astonishing portion of my life is built around trying to evade vomiting and preparing for the eventuality that I might. — Scott Stossel

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust. — John Stossel

When entrepreneurs are free to compete, they grow the pie so that everyone's share gets larger. — John Stossel

Give me a break. — John Stossel

You can either invade a country or leave them alone and trade with them. When goods cross borders, armies don't. — John Stossel

To finance 'entitlement' programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy? — John Stossel

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market. — John Stossel

Unions say, 'Education of the children is too important to be left to the vagaries of the market.' The opposite is true. Education is too important to be left to the calcified union/government monopoly. — John Stossel

The next time you see John Stossel or Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity - these Flat Earthers, these corporate toadies, lying to you, lying to the American public, and telling you that global warming doesn't exist - you send an email to their advertisers and tell them that you are not going to buy their products anymore. — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

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

Give me safety, or give me death. — John Stossel

The people who tried government regulation have lives which are miserable. — John Stossel

The war on drugs is what makes thugs. — John McWhorter

What I've learned in 40 years of consumer reporting is that the market is imperfect, and some people get ripped off. — John Stossel

The political class can't imagine a decentralized world where good things happen ... without them. But in the real world, that's exactly how good things happen, and how jobs are created. When government sets simple rules that everyone understands and then gets out of the way, free people create jobs. — John Stossel

Many people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems. Freedom will. — John Stossel

Some social phobics find even positive attention to be aversive. Think of the young child who bursts into tears when guests sing "Happy Birthday" to her at a party - or of Elfriede Jelinek afraid to pick up her Nobel Prize. Social attention - even positive, supportive attention - activates the neurocircuitry of fear. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Calling positive attention to yourself can incite jealousy or generate new rivalries. — Scott Stossel

During first grade, I spent nearly every afternoon for months in the school nurse's office, sick with psychosomatic headaches, begging to go home; by third grade, stomachaches had replaced the headaches, but my daily trudge to the infirmary remained the same. — Scott Stossel

Government has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and given them to another. — John Stossel

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. — John Stossel

One challenge is trying to extend access to more poorly served communities in rural areas and in the inner city. Sometimes you have kids who are suffering from trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder, and they have no way of getting access to the remedies that are available to them. — Scott Stossel

I had no trouble with strangers finding out about my anxiety. It was my friends and colleagues I was concerned about. — Scott Stossel

To grapple with and understand anxiety is, in some sense, to grapple with and understand the human condition. — Scott Stossel

The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better. — John Stossel

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

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

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

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

(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

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

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

Markets are too complex to manipulate beneficially. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some people say that in stressful situations I can seem unflappable, and I think that's partly because I'm always kind of internally flapped. — Scott Stossel

The theory of government I was taught says that government provides benefits, primarily security, to the entire population. In return we pay taxes. But lately the government has been a distributor of special privileges, taking money from some and giving it to others. America is now about evenly split between those who pay income taxes and those who consume them. — John Stossel

A panic attack is interesting the way a broken leg or a kidney stone is interesting - a pain that you want to end. — Scott Stossel

I'm a libertarian. It's a terrible word. — John 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

Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state. — John Stossel

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts. — John Stossel

I wanted to put a human face on anxiety disorders. I thought people who suffer from anxiety might recognize themselves and gain some comfort from my story and for those who don't suffer from anxiety disorders gain some understanding. — Scott Stossel

I like taking the subway to work. — John Stossel

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose. — John Stossel

The happiest stutterers, I learned, are those who are willing to stutter in front of others. — John Stossel

A conservative is a libertarian who has been mugged. — John Stossel

To say that my anxiety is reducible to the ions in my amygdala is as limiting as saying that my personality or my soul is reducible to the molecules that make up my brain cells or to the genes that underwrote them. — Scott Stossel

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

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

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

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

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

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