John Stossel famous quotes

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

#Government #People #Regulation

David Boaz has been my guide to the history, economics, and politics of freedom for years.
-- John Stossel

#Years #Economics #Guides

What would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You'd tell him to get his act together - stop spending so much or he'd destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long. But tack on eight more zeroes to that budget and you have the checkbook for our out-of-control, big-spending federal government.
-- John Stossel

#Kids #Thinking #Years

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

#Happiness #Meaningful #Inspiration

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.
-- John Stossel

#Jobs #Real #Simple

Give me safety, or give me death.
-- John Stossel

#Safety #Giving

What happened under communism - and increasingly, is happening in America, as Joseph Sobran put it: 'Need' now means wanting someone else's money. 'Greed' means wanting to keep your own. 'Compassion' is when a politician arranges the transfer.'
-- John Stossel

#Mean #Compassion #Wanting Someone

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

#Years #Anchors #Wanted

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.
-- John Stossel

#Government #Years #Long

Good government has to mean less government.
-- John Stossel

#Mean #Government

It’s not about electing the right people. It’s about a narrowing their responsibilities.
-- John Stossel

#Responsibility #People

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

#Decision #Life Is #Individual

When workers can get and equal return for less effort, workers make less effort
-- John Stossel

#Effort #Return #Equal

The smaller the government, the less the need to manipulate politicians.
-- John Stossel

#Government #Needs #Politician

Companies don't get rich hurting their customers.
-- John Stossel

#Hurt #Rich #Get Rich

Why, in our 'free' country, do Americans meekly stand aside and let the state limit our choices, even when we are dying?
-- John Stossel

#Country #Choices #Dying

As a free person, I ought to be allowed if I'm dying to take something.
-- John Stossel

#Dying #Persons

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

#Government #Years #Prosperity

I was ashamed for people to see me struggle.
-- John Stossel

#Struggle #People #Ashamed

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.
-- John Stossel

#Simple #Competition #Regulation

The happiest stutterers, I learned, are those who are willing to stutter in front of others.
-- John Stossel

#Willing

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.
-- John Stossel

#Jobs #Kids #Bully

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

#Discovery #Self #People

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

#America #Safety #Giving

You can either invade a country or leave them alone and trade with them. When goods cross borders, armies don't.
-- John Stossel

#Country #Army #Borders

The politicians should not tell the people to shut up.
-- John Stossel

#People #Political #Shut Up

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

#Drug #Competition #Trustworthy

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.
-- John Stossel

#Government #Years #Watches

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.
-- John Stossel

#Littles #Authority #Should

All our rights are gradually eroded as government gets bigger.
-- John Stossel

#Rights #Government #Bigger

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.
-- John Stossel

#America #People #Creative

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

#Government #Balance #Want

I'm a libertarian. It's a terrible word.
-- John Stossel

#Libertarian #Terrible

We have all kinds of government compensation systems that are much more efficient than the lawyers.
-- John Stossel

#Government #Lawyer #Kind

What I've learned in 40 years of consumer reporting is that the market is imperfect, and some people get ripped off.
-- John Stossel

#Years #People #Imperfect

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.
-- John Stossel

#Running #Passion #People

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.
-- John Stossel

#Running #School #Kids

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.
-- John Stossel

#Jobs #Believe #Government

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

#Government #Groups #Monopoly

..the real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough?
-- John Stossel

#Real #Mean #Thinking

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

#America #People #Choices

I like taking the subway to work.
-- John Stossel

#Subway

I was a closet stutterer.
-- John Stossel

#Closets

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

#Winning #Thinking #Transactions

When entrepreneurs are free to compete, they grow the pie so that everyone's share gets larger.
-- John Stossel

#Pie #Entrepreneur #Share

Private businesses ought to get to discriminate.
-- John Stossel

Living with the liberals, you get to hear their arguments, fight with them all the time. Keeps me alert.
-- John Stossel

#Fighting #Argument

There's no business that's too small for government to torture
-- John Stossel

#Government #Politics #Torture

Asking someone in the media about liberal bias is like asking a fish about water. 'Huh, what are you talking about? Where is it?'
-- John Stossel

#Media #Talking #Water

Well, who is more likely to volunteer to take a job in a bureaucracy that has little to recommend it except that it gives you the power to use government force to control the lives of others? A dispassionate scientist or a zealot? In government, the zealots eventually take over.
-- John Stossel

#Jobs #Government #Volunteer