I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

Gold is hoarded. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all gold ever mined is still around.

The capitalist system is about taking from the Earth and from the other great commodity, labour. What’s happening with this system is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and the only way out of it is supposed to be growth. But growth is debt. It’s going to make the situation worse.

I think it’s wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly.

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

My background educationally is physics and economics, and I grew up in sort of an engineering environment – my father is an electromechanical engineer. And so there were lots of engineery things around me.

What do you think a stimulus is? It’s spending – that’s the whole point! Seriously.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

I think Bible principles are principles for life.

I think big business is a terrible thing for the spirit of the country, as our spirit is the best thing about us.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

You need to be in the position where it is the cost of the fuel that actually matters and not the cost of building the rocket in the first place.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

If you want to be a good strategist, you can never just go off a principle you read in a book. You need to adapt what you do to the situation; no rule of thumb is true all the time.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista’s tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people.

I don’t want to do free jazz! Because free jazz – which is the musical equivalent of free marketeering – isn’t actually free at all. It’s just constrained by what your muscles can do.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.

When we value correct principles, we have truth – a knowledge of things as they are.

If the other fellow sells cheaper than you, it is called dumping. ‚Course, if you sell cheaper than him, that’s mass production.

As capitalism falters, the rich move their money out of the country, violence increases, and politicians promising prosperity are elected.

We didn’t become the most prosperous country in the world just by rewarding greed and recklessness. We didn’t come this far by letting the special interests run wild. We didn’t do it just by gambling and chasing paper profits on Wall Street. We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.

If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

Well, capitalism is a big problem, because with capitalism you’re just going to keep buying and selling things until there’s nothing else to buy and sell, which means gobbling up the planet.

I believe the universe is governed by the laws of science. The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

It may be laid down as a primary position, and the basis of our system, that every Citizen who enjoys the protection of a Free Government, owes not only a proportion of his property, but even of his personal services to the defense of it.

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.

To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies. So it is something in which no one believes and to which no one objects.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples‘ money.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

A true capitalist doesn’t have a job, because other people and other people’s money work for them.

Prices are important not because money is considered paramount but because prices are a fast and effective conveyor of information through a vast society in which fragmented knowledge must be coordinated.

China adopted a capitalist system in the 1980s, and they went from a 60% poverty rate to 10%.

Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.

Custom is our nature. What are our natural principles but principles of custom?

Every time the Fed implements ‚quantitative easing,‘ a.k.a. printing more money, two things go up: taxes and inflation. When taxes and inflation go up, more jobs are lost.

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

You know capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventions to be done. But in this area of diseases of the world at large, it’s really let us down.

Contrary to the claims of some of my critics and some of the editorial pages, I am an ardent believer in the free market.

Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.

Capital is money, capital is commodities. By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.