Best 70 quotes of John Stossel on MyQuotes

A handful of people who probably never even ran a small business actually think they can reinvent the health care system.

All our rights are gradually eroded as government gets bigger.

Any money the government spends must be taxed, borrowed or conjured out of thin air by the Federal Reserve, and that will reduce sound private investment. Obama has no real wealth to inject into the economy. He can only move around existing money while inflation robs us of purchasing power. Meanwhile, private investors who might have produced a better engine, battery, computer, cancer treatment or other wealth-creating and life-enhancing innovations hold back for fear that big government will undermine productive efforts.

As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and are self-serving.

A system that rewards politicians skilled at campaigning - which is the art of creating an illusion - and that puts hundreds of billions of coerced taxpayer dollars at the disposal of the winners will tend to attract men and women with a comparative advantage in manipulation.

A thousand restaurants close every month. They re-open, and that's good for America. Nobody's rescuing them. They employ people, too. If we let them go bankrupt, the factories don't go away, the creative people don't go away. They get employed more productively by others.

Central authority is bad. The bias should be for freedom. And without a central authority, there are lots of little authorities, and we learn which ones to trust.

Companies don't get rich hurting their customers.

Competition leads both drug companies and private regulators to be trustworthy. If they are not trustworthy, they die.

Current government regulation interferes with honest voluntary exchanges by imposing arbitrary terms and requiring tons of paperwork disclosing information no one wants anyway.

Entitlement? How can you be entitled to someone else's money?

Fraud will always exist. Enforcement of anti-fraud laws is a useful deterrent, but in the end there's no substitute for investor vigilance. Government regulations provide a false sense of security - and that's worth less than no sense of security at all.

Freedom works, and government, when it grows beyond the barest minimum, keeps people poor.

Give me a break - They say taxes are inevitable, like death. At least death doesn't come every year.

Government has no money of its own. All it does is take resources from one group and given them to another.

Government is so big today that more than half the population gets a major part of its income from the state.

Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose.

If government were less important in our lives, politicians would have fewer goodies to trade. In return, we'd have more money and more freedom.

I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.

I'm a little embarrassed about how long it took me to see the folly of most government intervention. It was probably 15 years before I really woke up to the fact that almost everything government attempts to do, it makes worse.

I'm an American. I'm for prosperity. I've discovered, from 40 years of reporting, that what creates prosperity is limited government.

I never wanted to be an anchor for 25 years, and suddenly I wanted to be one.

I saw how the regulation I called for made things worse, didn't help consumers and simple competition was better. And I started praising business and occasionally criticizing regulation.

Isn't allowing people a choice what America is all about?

I started out by viewing the marketplace as a cruel place, where you need intervention by government and lawyers to protect people. But after watching the regulators work, I have come to believe that markets are magical and the best protectors of the consumer. It is my job to explain the beauties of the free market.

I was ashamed for people to see me struggle.

I was bullied as a kid, and I got a job on television. And I had a camera. And so I wanted to go after those business bullies. And I just have been following that instinct.

Liberalism had come to mean spending more on everything-speech police, failed poverty programs that reward dependence, a bigger nanny state telling us we cannot eat fatty foods, workplace roles that stifle opportunity, and absurd environmental regulations.

Life is fairer when individuals are free to make their own decisions

'Live and let life' used to be a noble approach to life. Now you're considered compassionate if you demand that government impose your preferences on others.

Madoff's scam was small compared to Ponzi schemes the government itself runs: Social Security and Medicare.

Many people are priced out of the medical and insurance markets for one reason: the politicians refusal to give up power. Allowing them to seize another 16 percent of the economy won't solve our problems. Freedom will.

Most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy - or even 15 percent of one - doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets - private property, free exchange and the price system - can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.

Nothing keeps a company honest and efficient like the threat of other companies coming along and taking its business away.

No transaction happens unless it is voluntary. It only happens if both of you think you win.

Patrick Henry did not say, 'Give me absolutely safety or give me death.' America is supposed to be about freedom.

Patrick Henry didn't say, "Give me safety, or give me death.

People acting in their own self-interest is the fuel for all the discovery, innovation, and prosperity that powers the world.

People vastly overestimate the ability of central planners to improve on the independent action of diverse individuals. What I've learned watching regulators is that they almost always make things worse. If regulators did nothing, the self-correcting mechanisms of the market would mitigate most problems with more finesse. And less cost.

Politicians and bureaucrats clearly have no idea how complicated markets are. Every day people make countless tradeoffs, in all areas of life, based on subjective value judgements and personal information as they delicately balance their interests, needs and wants. Who is in a better position than they to tailor those choices to best serve their purposes? Yet the politicians believe they can plan the medical market the way you plan a birthday party.

Prosperity comes from leaving people free in a legal system that respects their persons and property so they can pursue their dreams while taking responsibility for their actions.

Saying that government is not the way to solve problems is not saying that humanity cannot solve its problems. What I've finally learned is this: Despite the obstacles created by governments, voluntary networks of private individuals - through voluntary exchange - solve all sorts of challenges.

Take away the government's monopoly, and private groups will do it better.

The market performs miracles so routinely that we take it for granted. Supermarkets provide 30,000 choices at rock-bottom prices. We take it for granted that when we stick a piece of plastic in a wall, cash will come out; that when we give the same plastic to a stranger, he will rent us a car, and the next month, Visa will have the accounting correct to the penny. By contrast, "experts" in government can't even count the vote accurately.

The one thing I've learned is that stuttering in public is never as bad as I fear it will be.

[T]he only way to shrink the trade deficit is for the government to prohibit us from buying whatever we want.

The people who have the biggest passion for restricting other people's behavior are the very people we should worry about most. Unfortunately, they keep running for office.

The people who run the international tests told us, "the biggest predictor of student success is choice." Nations that "attach the money to the kids" and thereby allow parents to choose between different public and private schools have higher test scores. This should be no surprise; competition makes us better.

The people who tried government regulation have lives which are miserable.

The political class can't imagine a decentralized world where good things happen...without them. But in the real world, that's exactly how good things happen, and how jobs are created. When government sets simple rules that everyone understands and then gets out of the way, free people create jobs.