You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.

---

The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.

---

When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.

---

If capitalism worked as the socialists think an economic system ought to work, and provided a constant equality of living conditions for all, regardless of whether a man was able or not, resourceful or not, diligent or not, thrifty or not, if capitalism put no premiums on resourcefulness and effort and not penalty on idleness or vice, it would produce only an equality of destitution.

---

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

---

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

---

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

---

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

---

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

---

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

---