It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self love.
Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.
A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.
Many individual fallacies in economics are founded on the larger, and usually implicit, fallacious assumption that economic transactions are a zero-sum process, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else. But voluntary economic transactions -- whether between employer and employee, tenant and landlord, or international trade -- would not continue to take place unless both parties were better off making these transactions than not making them.
Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. . .Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
In the first stone which he (the savage) flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another and thus we discover the origin of capital.
Usury laws, though intended to protect the borrower, inflict upon him the most serious inconvenience. In periods of glut their operation is peculiarly injurious. As the want of a profitable vend is occasioned by ill-proportioned production, whatsoever obstructs the transference of capital retards the required correction in the distribution of industry, and renders the evil more permanent than it otherwise would be.
This objection against legislative interference with the interest of money, applies with equal force to all taxes imposed upon the conveyance of property. The less the transference of property is obstructed, the more rapidly will capital flow from the channels in which it is in excess, to those in which it is deficient, and the shorter will be the period during which commodities will be brought to market in undue proportions.
It is impossible that a country should enjoy any tolerable or continuous prosperity if the price of the main article of the laborer's food be subject to sudden and considerable fluctuations.
Lowering the value of the currency...has a favorable influence upon effectual demand. But currency cannot always go on sinking in value, otherwise its power as a medium of exchange would altogether cease; and its recoil is attended with calamities which far more than counterbalance the advantages which accompanied its descent.
This recoil is precisely that which the practical statesman should endeavor to prevent. After the currency of a country has been depreciated for a certain time, and rents, wages, and prices, have been adjusted to the new measure of value, a restoration of the former standard violates the spirit of all existing contracts, and occasions an entire derangement of the market. In all such cases, policy and justice alike require, not that the currency should be raised to the level of the ancient standard, but that the standard should be lowered to the actual level of the currency.
A system of capitalism presumes sound money, not fiat money manipulated by a central bank. Capitalism cherishes voluntary contracts and interest rates that are determined by savings, not credit creation by a central bank.
Many individual fallacies in economics are founded on the larger, and usually implicit, fallacious assumption that economic transactions are a zero-sum process, in which what is gained by someone is lost by someone else. But voluntary economic transactions -- whether between employer and employee, tenant and landlord, or international trade -- would not continue to take place unless both parties were better off making these transactions than not making them. 
Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself. . .Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
In the first stone which he (the savage) flings at the wild animal he pursues, in the first stick that he seizes to strike down the fruit which hangs above his reach, we see the appropriation of one article for the purpose of aiding in the acquisition of another and thus we discover the origin of capital.