Richard Allen Epstein Quotes

If I have a right to a job, education, health care or a house, then I must be able to specify the person or persons who owe me any or all of these things.

America's greatness is due in no small measure to our system of government, in which power and authority are deliberately divided. The separation of powers is not a mere "technicality." It is the centerpiece of our Constitution. Our freedoms depend upon it in the future, just as they have in the past.

The pillars of classical liberalism call for flat taxes, with revenues put to limited uses; strong property rights; and free markets.

The New Deal is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and with the constitutional provisions designed to secure that end.

Feminism is the single most powerful social movement of our time, one that addresses every aspect of human and social life.

The protection of private property does more than promote market efficiency; it enhances the level of human freedom in the most intimate and personal parts of our lives.

At bottom are only two pure forms of legislation - productive and redistributive.

One of the great weaknesses of standard libertarian theory is that it tends to push too hard by elevating presumptions into absolutes.

Securing, not prohibiting, the orderly transfer of wealth from A to B, based on wealth differentials, is the raison d'être of the [New Deal programs]. The contrast between the modern progressive and classical liberal agendas could not be more explicit.

When you are young in this world, you believe that the class of deductive truths about social matters is larger than it turns out to be. [...] I have discovered, to my infinite regret, that most of the serious debates over the basic principles of any political order have an irreducible empirical content.

Do not get yourself into the illusion that there is something so unique about the question of organ or body parts ... that the general rules of economics do not apply.