John Stossel People Quotations

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.

Where I live in Manhattan and where I work at ABC, people say 'conservative' the way people say 'child molester.'

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.

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

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.

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.

To finance 'entitlement' programs, the government threatens force against the taxpayers who provide the money. Why are people who favor compulsion called humanitarians, while those who favor freedom are stigmatized as greedy?

I was ashamed for people to see me struggle.

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.

The politicians should not tell the people to shut up.

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

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

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

We like to think we're superior to the people who, centuries ago, burned 'witches' for no better reason than a neighbor's belief that his crop failure or impotence was caused by that woman's action. But reporters are still prone to the same mental errors that caused these killings: seeing patterns where there are none, finding causes where there is only coincidence, ignoring our sources' political agendas and turning scanty evidence into panic.

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

What private property does is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce for more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.

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

But nothing is better than the market, where the customer and the business deal directly with each other, because if you rip people off, word gets out. That business eventually loses its customers, and the good ones that serve people well get the business. You get government in there, and it's just more money for the lawyers who write the bills.

People like getting what they think is free stuff from government.