The 25 Best Quotes from Walter Williams

In honor of the four-year anniversary of his death, the best quotes from Walter Williams.

If you start talking about a brilliant, black, conservative economist, the first name on everyone’s tongue is Thomas Sowell. However, he’s not the only one. Walter Williams also fits that definition, and he was a brilliant man who wrote some of the best common-sense conservative columns you’re ever going to read.

Personally, I interviewed Walter Williams twice and found him to have a razor-sharp mind. Four years after his death on December 1^st, 2020, at the ripe old age of 84, I wanted to put together a list of his best quotes because a great mind like Walter Williams deserves to have his best work shared with future generations even after he’s passed on.

25) "Despite the miracles of capitalism, it doesn't do well in popularity polls. One of the reasons is that capitalism is always evaluated against the non-existent, non-realizable utopias of socialism or communism. Any earthly system, when compared to a Utopia, will pale in comparison. But for the ordinary person, capitalism, with all of its warts, is superior to any system yet devised to deal with our everyday needs and desires."

24) "Today's liberals wish to disarm us so they can run their evil and oppressive agenda on us. The fight against crime is just a convenient excuse to further their agenda. I don't know about you, but if you hear that Williams' guns have been taken, you'll know Williams is dead."

23) "During the first Reagan administration, I participated in a number of press conferences on either a book or article I'd written or as a panelist in a discussion of White House public policy. On occasion, when the question-and-answer session began, I'd tell the press, 'You can treat me like a white person. Ask hard, penetrating questions.' The remark often brought uncomfortable laughter, but I was dead serious. If there is one general characteristic of white liberals, it's their condescending and demeaning attitude toward blacks."

22) "The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government."

21) "Try this thought experiment. Pretend you're a tyrant. Among your many liberty-destroying objectives are extermination of blacks, Jews, and Catholics. Which would you prefer, a United States with political power centralized in Washington, powerful government agencies with detailed information on Americans and compliant states, or power widely dispersed over 50 states, thousands of local jurisdictions, and a limited federal government?"

20) "What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions and in some markets, billions of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one."

19) "The public good is promoted best by people pursuing their own private interests. This bothers some people because they're more concerned with motives than with results."

18) "The crucial question for any policy is not what are its intentions, but what are its effects?"

17) "The true test of one’s commitment to liberty and private property rights… comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree."

16) "Legality alone is no guide for a moral people. There are many things in this world that have been, or are, legal but clearly immoral. Slavery was legal. Did that make it moral? South Africa’s apartheid, Nazi persecution of Jews, and Stalinist and Maoist purges were all legal, but did that make them moral?"

15) "In general, presidents and congressmen have very limited power to do good for the economy and awesome power to do bad. The best good thing that politicians can do for the economy is to stop doing bad. In part, this can be achieved through reducing taxes and economic regulation and staying out of our lives."

14) "The act of reaching into one’s own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else’s pocket is despicable."

13) "If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn."

12) "Government is about coercion. Limiting government is the single most important instrument for guaranteeing liberty."

11) "What human motivation is responsible for getting the most wonderful things done? I would say greed. When I use the term greed, I do not mean cheating, stealing, fraud, and other acts of dishonesty, I mean people seeking to get the most for themselves. One might be tempted to use 'enlightened self-interest' but I like greed better. Unfortunately, many people are naive enough to believe that it is compassion, concern, and 'feeling another’s pain' that’s the superior human motivation. As such we fall easy prey to charlatans, quacks, and hustlers."

10) "The bottom line is that if politicians weren't in the business of granting favors and exacting tribute, every single-issue surrounding campaign finance reform would be irrelevant. After all, why would anyone spend money for influence, access, favors, and tribute if the only thing that politicians do is to live up to their oaths to uphold and defend the Constitution?"

9) "Market capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to the common man. The rich have always had access to entertainment, often in the comfort of their palaces and mansions. The rich have never had to experience the drudgery of having to beat out carpets, iron their clothing, or slave over a hot stove all day in order to have a decent dinner. They could afford to hire people. Capitalism's mass production and marketing have made radios and televisions, vacuum cleaners, wash-and-wear clothing, and microwave ovens available and well within the means of the common man; thus, sparing him of the boredom and drudgery of the past. Today, the common man has the power to enjoy much (and more) of what only the rich could afford yesteryear."

8) "Suppose I hire you to repair my computer. The job is worth $200 to me and doing the job is worth $200 to you. The transaction will occur because we have a meeting of the mind. Now suppose there's the imposition of a 30 percent income tax on you. That means you won't receive $200 but instead $140. You might say the heck with working for me -- spending the day with your family is worth more than $140. You might then offer that you'll do the job if I pay you $285. That way your after-tax earnings will be $200 -- what the job was worth to you. There's a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $285. So it's my turn to say the heck with it. This simple example demonstrates that one effect of taxes is that of eliminating transactions, and hence jobs."

7) "How many times have we heard ‘free tuition,’ ‘free health care,’ and free you-name-it? If a particular good or service is truly free, we can have as much of it as we want without the sacrifice of other goods or services. Take a ‘free’ library; is it really free? The answer is no. Had the library not been built, that $50 million could have purchased something else. That something else sacrificed is the cost of the library. While users of the library might pay a zero price, zero price and free are not one and the same. So when politicians talk about providing something free, ask them to identify the beneficent Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy."

6) "The only way Congress can get one dollar to spend is to take that one dollar from Americans, borrow that one dollar from Americans, or inflate that one dollar from Americans. So, it's very much like the visual image of a swimming pool. A person notes there is a shallow end, so he takes the water out of the deep end and pours it in the shallow end, hoping to raise the height of the water in the pool - and you would call that person stupid."

5) "Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man."

4) "Poverty in Egypt, or anywhere else, is not very difficult to explain. There are three basic causes: People are poor because they cannot produce anything highly valued by others. They can produce things highly valued by others but are hampered or prevented from doing so. Or, they volunteer to be poor."

3) "We might think of dollars as being 'certificates of performance.' The better I serve my fellow man, and the higher the value he places on that service, the more certificates of performance he gives me. The more certificates I earn, the greater my claim on the goods my fellow man produces. That's the morality of the market. In order for one to have a claim on what his fellow man produces, he must first serve him."

2) "My definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree?…how much of what I earn belongs to you – and why?"

1) "Here's Williams' roadmap out of poverty: Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits."

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