individual prosperity Quotes

Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization's history. For some reason that simple truth has evaded everybody.

How few aim at the good of the whole, without aiming too much at the prosperity of the parts!

Economic growth is necessary to keep the promise - enormously important to individual Americans - that each generation will have the opportunity to become more prosperous than the preceding one, the popular term for which is 'the American dream.'

Regarding Ronald Reagan: In point of fact, the image of Ronald Reagan, the man responsible for shaping that decade (the 1980s), should be carved into Mount Rushmore, minted into coins, and emblazoned in a place of honor in every school child's history text as a constant reminder of this great man's contributions to world freedom, national pride, and individual prosperity. With the truth, the term 'Reaganomics' will be used only as a term of endearment and respect.

The left hates capitalism, not because of freedom and liberty - although they do. But the primary they hate capitalism is that it is the most efficient engine to create wealth for the greatest number of people in a society that has ever been devised. Nobody's ever claimed it's perfect. Nobody's ever said it's flawless. But it's better than anything else out there, particularly anything left has to offer.

Conservatism must be based on allowing everyone to become an owner - equity for everyman.

The capitalist system, in spite of all obstacles put in its way by governments and politicians, has raised the standard of living of the masses in an unprecedented way.

Free market capitalism has done more for the soul of the human race than any other system. And it's created the highest standard of living.

If the small government concept grows, we have fewer dollars leaving our pockets, we have more folks motivated to make a profit.

Time and again we have learned that the best way to achieve growth and create jobs is for hardworking people to keep more of their own money in their own pockets.

If capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism.

There is, indeed, a most dangerous passage in the history of a democratic people. When the taste for physical gratifications among them has grown more rapidly than their education and their experience of free institutions, the time will come when men are carried away and lose all self-restraint at the sight of new possessions they are about to obtain. In their intense and exclusive anxiety to make a fortune they lose sight of the close connection that exists between the private fortune of each and the prosperity of all.

Here, every man labors for himself, and not to pamper the pride of royalty, not to support kingly pomp, luxury, and dissipation! Here, no ghostly priest stalks forth, and by virtue of prerogative seizes upon a tenth of the hard earnings of the industrious poor, leaving them in a state of want and wretchedness; but they may apply their little all to the conveniences of themselves and families.

Point is, you can't find a country on earth with a higher standard of living. You can't find a country higher than America. You can't find a place on earth where the opportunity to grow your standard of living, as an individual, is greater than the United States of America. Capitalism may not be perfect, but it's better than anything else that's out there.

If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.

It is certain that despotism ruins individuals by preventing them from producing wealth much more than by depriving them of what they have already produced; it dries up the source of riches, while it usually respects acquired property. Freedom, on the contrary, produces far more goods than it destroys; and the nations which are favored by free institutions invariably find that their resources increase even more rapidly than their taxes.

We [entrepreneurs] required that you leave us free to function -- free to think and work as we choose ... -- free to earn our own profits and make our own fortunes ... Such was the price we asked, which you chose to reject as too high.

Only when the human spirit is allowed to invent and create, only when individuals are given a personal stake in deciding economic policies and benefiting from their success - only then can societies remain economically alive, dynamic, prosperous, progressive and free.

He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

Capitalism gave the world what it needed, a higher standard of living for a steadily increasing number of people.

Whether humanity is to comprehensively prosper...depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: are humans worthwhile to universe invention?