Most Viewed Business & Finance Quotes

Socialism took control during the last depression. Massive government welfare programs were created. Rather than teaching people to fish, we gave people fish—even rich people.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, or who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government - people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Separating words from realities is one of the most important steps toward evaluating government policies, whether domestically or internationally.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The primary reason most people are afraid of changing is because they are afraid of making mistakes, especially financial mistakes. Most people cling to job security because they are afraid of failing financially. The reason most people turn their money over to financial planners is because they hope the financial planner will not make mistakes, which, ironically, is a mistake.

To me, our education system's biggest problem is that it teaches kids not to make mistakes. If children do make mistakes, the system punishes them rather than teaching them to learn from their mistakes. An intelligent person knows that we learn by making mistakes. We learn to ride a bicycle by falling off the bike and climbing back on. We learn to swim by jumping in the water. How can people learn about money if they are afraid of making mistakes.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

People who say that the government has to "do something" when there is an economic downturn almost never compare what actually happened when the government did something, as in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, compared to what happened when the government did nothing after a comparable stock market crash in 1987 - or in fact after a number of other crashes before 1929. Facts seem to have become irrelevant, for all too many people, who rely instead on visions and rhetoric.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Government policies can be judged by what they promise or by what they do. While it might seem to be obvious that the latter is what is relevant, many people nevertheless assume that rent control laws control rent, gun control laws control guns, stimulus spending stimulates the economy and jobs bills create jobs. Moreover, few people seem to find it necessary to check any of these assumptions against facts. For example, the fact that cities like New York and San Francisco, with a long history of very strong rent control laws, have some of the highest rents in the country might suggest that such assumptions need a lot closer attention than either the public or the media give them.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

It has been estimated that a thousand years passed before the standard of living in Europe rose again to the level it had achieved in Roman times. The collapse of civilization is not just the replacement of rulers or institutions with new rulers and new institutions. It is the destruction of a whole way of life and the painful, and sometimes pathetic, attempts to begin rebuilding amid the ruins.

Is that where America is headed? I believe it is. Our only saving grace is that we are not there yet—and that nothing is inevitable until it happens.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

In 1971, President Richard Nixon changed the rules of money: Without the approval of Congress, he severed the U.S. dollar's relationship with gold. He made this unilateral decision during a quietly held two-day meeting on Minot Island in Maine, without consulting his State Department or the international monetary system.

President Nixon changed the rules because foreign countries being paid in U.S. dollars grew skeptical because the U.S. Treasury was printing more and more money to cover our debts, and they began exchanging their dollars directly for gold in earnest, depleting most of the U.S. gold reserves. The vault was being emptied because the government was importing more than it was exporting and because of the costly Vietnam War. As our economy grew, we were also importing more and more oil.

In everyday terms, America was going bankrupt. We were spending more than we earned. The United States could not pay its bills—as long as our bills were to be paid in gold. By freeing the dollar from gold, and making it illegal to directly exchange dollars for gold, Nixon created a way for the U.S. to print its way out of debt.

In 1971, the world's rules of money were changed and the biggest economic boom in the history of the world began. The boom continued as long as the world accepted our funny money, money backed by nothing but a promise by U.S. taxpayers to pay the bills of the United States.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

The experiences of life can help people outgrow whatever they were indoctrinated with.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

When money and power are at stake, there will always be conspiracies. Money and power will always cause people to commit corrupt acts.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

Every time an educator brings a banker or a financial planner into their classroom, supposedly in the name of financial education, they arc actually allowing the fox to enter the hen house. I am not saying bankers and financial planners arc bad people. All I am saying is that they are agents of the rich and powerful. Their job is not to educate but to recruit future customers. That is why they preach the doctrine of saving your money and investing in mutual funds. It helps the bank, not you. Again, I reiterate this is not bad. It's good business for the bank. It is no different than Army and Marine recruiters coming on campus when I was in high school and selling students on the glory of serving our country.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

One of causes of this financial crisis is that most people do not know good financial advice from bad financial advice. Most people cannot tell a good financial advisor from a con man. Most people cannot tell a good investment from a bad one. Most people go to school so they can get a good job, work hard, pay taxes, buy a house, save money, and turn over any extra money to a financial planner—or an expert like Bernie Madoff.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.

Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to political magic.

Alarms ranging from "overpopulation" to "global warming" and crusades ranging from "affordable housing" to "universal health care" have been among the distractions of political magicians. But few distractions have had such a long and impressive political track record as getting people to resent and, if necessary, hate other people.

The most politically effective totalitarian systems have gotten people to give up their own freedom in order to vent their resentment or hatred at other people - under Communism, the capitalists; under Nazis, the Jews.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

One of the most audacious attempts to take away our freedom to live our lives as we see fit has been the so-called "health care reform" bills that were being rushed through Congress before either the public or the members of Congress themselves had a chance to discover all that was in them.

For this, we were taught to resent doctors, insurance companies and even people with "Cadillac health insurance plans," who were to be singled out for special taxes. Meanwhile, our freedom to make our own medical decisions - on which life and death can depend - was to be quietly taken from us and transferred to our betters in Washington.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

If all this sound and fury in Washington was about getting an economic crisis behind us, tax cuts could do that a lot faster.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The government is putting money into banks, even when the banks don't want it, in hopes that the banks will put it into circulation. But the latest statistics show that banks are lending even less money now than they were before the government dumped all that cash on them.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

However, thanks to the United Nations, there is a place where political leaders can go to do nothing, with a flurry of highly visible activity - and the media will cover it in detail, with a straight face, so that people will think that something is actually being done.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

According to an official document of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, right-wing extremists include "groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration." It also includes those "rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority."

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

As Warren Buffett has said, "The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it is going up."

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

Study after study, not only here but in other countries, show that the most affordable housing is where there has been the least government interference with the market - contrary to rhetoric.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

It is amazing how fast people learn when they are not insulated from the consequences of their decisions.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Who hasn't been out of work at some time or other, or had an illness or accident that created unexpected expenses? The old and trite notion of "saving for a rainy day" is old and trite precisely because this has been a common experience for a very long time.

What is new is the current notion of indulging people who refused to save for a rainy day or to live within their means. In politics, it is called "compassion" - which comes in both the standard liberal version and "compassionate conservatism."

The one person toward whom there is no compassion is the taxpayer.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

The word repeated endlessly in these political charades is "deregulation." The idea is that it was a lack of government supervision which allowed "greed" in the private sector to lead the nation into crises that only our Beltway saviors can solve.

What utter rubbish this all is can be found by checking the record of how government regulators were precisely the ones who imposed lower mortgage lending standards - and it was members of "Congress (of both parties) who pushed the regulators, the banks and the mortgage-buying giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into accepting risky mortgages, in the name of "affordable housing" and more home ownership. Presidents of both parties also jumped on the bandwagon.

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Poverty is obscene. It is poverty that needs to be reduced - and increasing a country's productivity has done that far more widely than redistributing income by targeting "the rich."

— Thomas Sowell; Dismantling America

Most people leave school not knowing even the basic differences between a stock and a bond, between debt and equity. Few know why preferred stocks are labeled preferred and why mutual funds are mutual or the difference between a mutual fund, hedge fund, exchange traded fund, and a fund of funds. Many people think debt is bad, yet debt can make you rich. Debt can increase your return on investment, but only if you know what you are doing. Only a few know the difference between capital gains and cash flow and which is less risky. Most people blindly accept the idea of going to school to get a good job and never know why employees pay higher tax rates than the entrepreneur who owns the business. Many people are in trouble today because they believed their home was an asset, when it was really a liability. These are basic and simple financial concepts. Yet for some reason, our schools conveniently omit a subject required for a successful life—the subject of money.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

In 1903, John D. Rockefeller created the General Education Board. It seems this was done to ensure a steady supply of employees who were always financially in need of money, a job, and job security. There is evidence that Rockefeller was influenced by the Prussian System of education, a system designed to produce good employees and good soldiers, people who dutifully follow orders, such as "Do this or be fired," or, "Turn your money over to me for safe keeping, and I'll invest it for you." Regardless of whether this was Rockefeller's intent in creating the General Education Board, the result today is that even those with a good education and a secure job are feeling financially insecure.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

The primary cause of inflation is the government printed money, which increases the money supply. Inflation is caused by the purchasing power of your money going down as more and more dollars flood the existing pool of money, which means prices of many essential products, such as food, fuel, and services, go up as more dollars chase the same amount of goods. Inflation is often called "the invisible tax," which is hardest on the poor, elderly, savers, low-income workers, and fixed-income retirees.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

Today, we hear the word bailout over and over. In reality, not all banks are bailed out. Bailouts are only for the biggest banks.

If a smaller bank goes bust, the FDIC generally uses a payout to fix the situation. For example, if you and I owned a small bank, and we made too many bad loans, the FDIC would simply close the bank, pay off the depositors, and we and our investors would lose the equity we put in to start the bank. A payout is often the remedy for small bankers with no political clout.

A second option is a sell-off. A sell-off occurs when a large banks steps in to take over a struggling bank. This has happened a number of times during the recent financial crisis, most notably with JP Morgan's purchase of Washington Mutual. It is an easy way for a larger bank to gain market share. The FDIC takes over the troubled bank on Friday and reopens it on Monday as a branch of the bigger bank. Again, this is a sell-off not a bailout.

Bailouts are generally reserved only for big banks and bankers with political clout—and for banks that took the greatest risk and thus have the greatest chance of severely damaging the economy, banks that are too big to fail. As Irvine Sprague, a former director of the FDIC, writes in his book bailout, "In a bailout, the bank does not close, and everyone—insured or not—is fully protected, except management which is fired and stockholders who retain only greatly diluted value in their holdings. Such privileged treatment is accorded by the FDIC only rarely to an elect few."

This means bailouts are only for the rich. If a big bank such as JP Morgan Chase or Citibank gets in trouble, the taxpayers pay for all losses. This means the $250,000 limit does not apply. If a bank in Europe has millions on deposit, or a rich man from Mexico has millions in savings, their money is 100 percent covered. Taxpayers pick up the tab.

If you and I took the risks that the biggest banks did, we would lose everything. We would not be bailed out. In overly simply terms, the FDIC is a smoke screen protecting the biggest banks. If a big bank gets caught, the government bails it out.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich

We live in the Information Age. In the Information Age, money is important. More specifically, knowledge about money is essential in the information age. The problem is our educational system is still in the Industrial Age, and in the minds of most intellectuals and academics, money is not important. Most of these people are operating on old, outdated, and obsolete ideas of money. But money is important. Today money is a key aspect of life. Today financial security is more important than job security.

— Robert Kiyosaki; Rich Dad's Conspiracy of The Rich