I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

It is a way to take people’s wealth from them without having to openly raise taxes. Inflation is the most universal tax of all.

A thing is worth what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it.

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

The rise in the price of gold is a sign that capitalism has stumbled.

Money is kind of a base subject. Like water, food, air and housing, it affects everything yet for some reason the world of academics thinks it’s a subject below their social standing.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

The real minimum wage is zero.

Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics – trying to play a serious part in the world – to a culture that’s really entertainment-based.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

Gold is hoarded. It’s estimated that 95 percent of all gold ever mined is still around.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

Every time the Fed implements ‚quantitative easing,‘ a.k.a. printing more money, two things go up: taxes and inflation. When taxes and inflation go up, more jobs are lost.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.

Socialists tend to want to pay people more money to do less work, and capitalists tend to want to provide better products at better prices.

The climate crisis is both the easiest and the hardest issue we have ever faced. The easiest because we know what we must do. We must stop the emissions of greenhouse gases. The hardest because our current economics are still totally dependent on burning fossil fuels, and thereby destroying ecosystems in order to create everlasting economic growth.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners, and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together, let no man put asunder.

A national debt, if it is not excessive, will be to us a national blessing.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

Economists treat economics as if it is a pure science divorced from the facts of life. The result of this false accountancy is a willful confusion under cover of which industry wreaks its havoc scot-free and ignores the environmental cost.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy – well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I’m President, I never will.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

The nuclear approach I’m involved in is called a traveling-wave reactor, which uses waste uranium for fuel. There’s a lot of things that have to go right for that dream to come true – many decades of building demo plants, proving the economics are right. But if it does, you could have cheaper energy with no CO2 emissions.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

Rich countries can afford to overpay for things.

A shortage is a sign that somebody is keeping the price artificially lower than it would be if supply and demand were allowed to operate freely.

No nation was ever ruined by trade.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

For most of us, relationship with another is based on dependence, either economic or psychological. This dependence creates fear, breeds in us possessiveness, results in friction, suspicion, frustration.

The reason we should do a carbon tax is because it’s the right thing to do. It’s economics 101, elementary stuff.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.

The true cost to the world of a burger is far greater than the money you hand over to buy it.

Debt is a social and ideological construct, not a simple economic fact.

When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.

I’m interested in movement, and I’m interested in money, and I’m interested in the movement of money.

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it.

I had to abandon free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

All the political angst and moral melodrama about getting ‚the rich‘ to pay ‚their fair share‘ is part of a big charade. This is not about economics, it is about politics.

As you know, low demand and high supply means a drop in value of anything, including the dollar.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

If the other fellow sells cheaper than you, it is called dumping. ‚Course, if you sell cheaper than him, that’s mass production.

Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.

We need earmark reform, and when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They said, ‚What for?‘ I said, ‚I’m going to buy some sugar.‘

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don’t riot when oil prices rise.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.