William E. Simon
I continue to believe that the American people have a love-hate relationship with inflation. They hate inflation but love everything that causes it.Collection: Relationship
Bad politicians are sent to Washington by good people who don't vote.Collection: Politics
The nation should have a tax system that looks like someone designed it on purpose.
Productivity and the growth of productivity must be the first economic consideration at all times, not the last. That is the source of technological innovation, jobs, and wealth.
Infinitely more important than sharing one's material wealth is sharing the wealth of ourselves - our time and energy, our passion and commitment, and, above all, our love.
The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.
Writing checks for charities is necessary and important. But it can't compare with corporal works of mercy, which are infinitely greater.
The very nature of the government, and the direction it's been heading in for the past 40 years, is one of contrived government solutions to all the problems in the United States.
We only have politicians who are concerned with being reelected.
Disagreement on issues doesn't mean 'dissension.' All it means is that honest men can differ in their approach. You lay out your positions, and president makes a decision.
Everybody in this society that has been lurching toward socialism and collectivism for 40 years has their hand out. And the propensity of Congress is to spend, spend, elect, elect. That hasn't changed, and it isn't going to change for a long time.
A tax cut would most certainly be my first choice rather than an increase in federal spending. Those who advocate that fail to see that spending not only continues in subsequent years, but it grows and grows.
Dad was high society, a big man in town, a 'Who's Who' in New jersey.
My father's card-playing buddies treated me as a plain, ordinary, commonplace kid destined for mediocrity - or less. I suppose they expected that I would spend my life as a clerk of some sort.
Work appealed to me; school did not. I was a disinterested, bored student.
By the mid-1950s, the young bond traders on the Street were becoming more and more of a fraternity. We organized informal luncheons every Thursday in an effort to educate financial writers, who knew next to nothing about municipal bonds.
Trading demands total concentration and the ability to do several things at once while instantly recalling trading prices from the day, or week, before.
I sometimes think that the only person fit to inherit wealth is the person who doesn't need an inheritance - the person who would create his own fortune no matter what his start in life - and have come to view inherited wealth as an affliction.
Pop taught me respect for my fellow man and reverence for my God. He taught me the importance of family and religion.
While Pop lived his life in comfort, he was always generous to the less fortunate.
I found that I not only tolerated taking risks, I loved it.
At Union Securities, I threw myself into my work with the discipline and commitment that I had always demonstrated in employment and only rarely displayed in school. Years later, I would come to appreciate, abstractly, the importance of productive activity to the mind and soul of both an individual and a nation.
There is only one social system that reflects the sovereignty of the individual: the free-market, or capitalist, system.
It is essential that the young people of this country learn to respect the right of every man and woman to seek his or her happiness with minimal interference from the government.
For the U.S., the primary interest is our continued access to Saudi Arabian oil in adequate quantities... at an acceptable political as well as economic price.
If you would not confront your neighbor and demand his money at the point of a gun to solve every new problem that may appear in your life, you should not allow the government to do it for you.Collection: Gun
Freedom is strangely ephemeral. It is something like breathing; one only becomes acutely aware of its importance when one is choking.Collection: Love
The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.Collection: Government
If you really want to help the poor, help the rich. They're the ones who will invest, build more factories, create more jobs.Collection: Jobs
The advantage of the cauliflower is that if all else fails, you can always cover it with melted cheese and eat it.Collection: Cheese
Achievers must not be penalized or parasites rewarded if we aspire to a healthy, productive, and ethical society.Collection: Healthy
Is it not strange that the descendants of those Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the Atlantic to preserve their own freedom of opinion have always proved themselves intolerant of the spiritual liberty of others?Collection: Spiritual
Infinitely more important than sharing one's material wealth is sharing the wealth of ourselves-our time and energy, our passion and commitment, and, above all, our love.Collection: Passion
The nation ought to have a tax system which looks like someone designed it on purpose.Collection: Political
Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.Collection: Liberty
Friedmans influence reaches far beyond the academic community and the world of economics. Rather than lock himself in an ivory tower, he has joined the fray to fight for the survival of this great country of ours.Collection: Country