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You beat 50 percent of the people in America by working hard. You beat 40 percent by being a person of honesty and integrity and standing for something. The last 10 percent is a dogfight in the free enterprise system.
Oct 1, 2025
Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise.
Private enterprise is ceasing to be free enterprise. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.
Free enterprise is a rough and competitive game. It is a hell of a lot better than a government monopoly.
The way to maximize production is to maximize the incentives to production. And the way to do that, as the modern world has discovered, is through the system known as capitalism - the system of private property, free markets, and free enterprise.
The devaluation of words and promises regarding free enterprise is, in principle, worse than the devaluation of the rouble
For the majority of Americans, collectivist or nationalized economy is morally wrong and therefore unjust. For them, free enterprise meets their keen sense of justice.
If one examines the American idea of freedom, the individual, free enterprise, their Constitution, their political and economic structures as well as their mode of exploiting their natural resources, all these are shrouded in the idea of justice.
A program whose basic thesis is, not that the system of free enterprise for profit has failed in this generation, but that it has not yet been tried!
Could there be anything resembling a free enterprise economy, if wealth and property were concentrated in the hands of a few, while the great majority owned little more than the shirts on their backs?
I believe that the free enterprise system is the greatest engine of prosperity the world's ever known. I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk-takers being rewarded. But I also believe that everybody should have a fair shot and everybody should do their fair share and everybody should play by the same rules, because that's how our economy's grown. That's how we built the world's greatest middle class.
It's a fundamental aspect of the free enterprise system and economics: If there's no penalty associated with increased costs, why not lay on increased costs?
Our Founding Fathers well understood that concentrated power is the enemy of liberty and the rights of man. They knew that the American experiment in individual liberty, free enterprise and republican self-government could succeed only if power were widely distributed. And since in any society social and political power flow from economic power, they saw that wealth and property would have to be widely distributed among the people of the country. The truth of this insight is immediately apparent.
We stand for the maintenance of private property... We shall protect free enterprise as the most expedient, or rather the sole possible economic order.
It's time to take Economics 101 to Washington. We believe in liberty, we believe in limited government, we believe in free enterprise, we believe in family values and the sanctity of human life, and we all believe Washington needs a good dose of Economics 101.
Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.
We call it EPCOT, spelled E-P-C-O-T: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Here it is in larger scale. EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.
Competition, free enterprise, and an open market were never meant to be symbolic fig leaves for corporate socialism and monopolistic capitalism.
Free enterprise is the sure and so far the only known way of constantly improving the well-being of mankind.
American prosperity and American free enterprise are both highly unusual in the world, and we should not overlook the possibility that the two are connected.
If succeeding generations of Americans don't understand the concepts of justice, individual rights, free enterprise, capitalism, sovereignty or national security, there can be no guarantee that those concepts - or others like them - will continue.
I am convinced that the majority of American people do understand that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy. They understand that these values are the hope of the world.
The free enterprise concept inherent in the economic model of capitalism should mean common people, or lower and middle class wage-earners, have greater potential to rise up and gain financial independence. In reality, however, free enterprise all too often leads to an almost total lack of government regulation that in turn allows the global elite to run amuck in Gordon Gecko-style financial coups.
Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.
I'm the guy that's trying to break up that monopoly to introduce free enterprise and competition to the energy sector.
Our free enterprise system of disseminating information is collectively referred to as The Media. But there is no collective.
China has to understand America wants to trade with them. We want a world that's stable. We like free enterprise, but you got to play by the rules.
We preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe.
I think the free-enterprise system has been great for society. That doesn't mean it's completely perfect. And also, when people say capitalism, I'm not really sure what they mean.
Nobody talks more of free enterprise and competition and of the best man winning than the man who inherited his father's store or farm.
Extreme taxation, excessive controls, oppressive government competition with business, frustrated minorities and forgotten Americans are not the products of free enterprise. They are the residue of centralized bureaucracy, of government by a self-anointed elite.
Americans want and deserve a broad array of health insurance choices so they can identify those that best fit their own individual or family needs. These choices expand when we allow free enterprise to foster innovation, not smother it with taxes and one-size fits all ideology.
Free enterprise makes people prosperous, all people prosperous, and big government makes people poorer.
Whether we look at capitalism, taxes, business, or government, the data show a clear and consistent pattern: 70 percent of Americans support the free enterprise system and are unsupportive of big government.
As for Christianity's alleged concern with truth, Christian faith is to free inquiry what the Mafia is to free enterprise. Christianity may be represented as a competitor in the realm of ideas to be considered on the basis of its merits, but this is mere disguise. Like the Mafia, if Christianity fails to defeat its competition by legitimate means (which is a forgone conclusion), it resorts to strong-arm tactics. Have faith or be damned - this biblical doctrine alone is enough to exclude Christianity from the domain of reason.
A minimum-wage law, a law that prevents employers and employees from entering into mutually beneficial economic exchanges, is as far from a free market or free enterprise as one can get. That's why it causes so much damage and destruction, especially to black teenagers and others whose labor, for one reason or another, is valued by employers at less than the government-established minimum wage.
There isn’t a person at the Koch brothers events who would not get a good return on their investment by investing in [Santorum] as president, because of what they believe about the free enterprise system.
When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.
A genuine free enterprise system, without state-enforced artificial scarcities, artificial property rights or subsidies, would be like dynamite at the foundations of corporate power.
From my perspective, what I'm really focused on, is making sure that, for the broadest number of Americans possible, limited government and free enterprise, the principles that have truly helped build our country into an exceptional one, is one that is being sold to and appeals to the broadest number of Americans.
And the word is capitalism. We are too mealy-mouthed. We fear the word capitalism is unpopular. So we talk about the free enterprise system and run to cover in the folds of the flag and talk about the American Way of Life.
Let the rabbit of free enterprise out of its velveteen bag and too many people would have to be fired, too much idiocy exposed to the light of judgment or ridicule, too much vanity sacrificed to the fires of efficiency. Such a catastrophe obviously would threaten the American way of life, to say nothing of the belief in free markets.
The widespread distribution of private property ownership is the cornerstone of American liberty. Without it, neither our free enterprise system nor our republican form of government could long endure.
Primaries are a family fight. I'm a pro-free enterprise, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life Republican.
I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, I said, "What party is he?" My friend said, "He's a Republican." I said, "Then I am a Republican."
Those who yearn for the end of capitalism should pray for government by men who believe that all positive action is inimical to what they call thoughtfully the fundamental principles of free enterprise.
The worst enslaving trait of all is greed. I rail against the substitution of money for worth. The idea that the endless accumulation of dead money can furnish a meaningful life to sold-out souls is the supreme lie offered by the system of free enterprise.
No matter how deeply wedded one may be to the free enterprise system (and I, for one, am wedded for life), one has to accept the need for positive government; one has to consider government action on a sizable scale as desirable rather than as a necessary evil.
However, however, if the goal is to abandon America's free enterprise economy, if the goal is to convert America into a submissive member of the international community, if the goal is not to fix America, but to change America, then they want leaders that are going to come up here and fight it every step of the way.
I offer a better way for America with ideas that actually work, a reformed tax code that rewards free enterprise instead of just enterprising lobbyists. A reformed health care system that operates by free choice instead of by force and doesn't leave you answering to cold, clueless bureaucrats. A commitment to a renewed commitment to building a 21st Century military and giving our veterans the care that they were promised and the care that they earned.