Today I saw on Facebook a quote attributed to Winston Churchill. “If you have ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”I can find no documentation to support his saying or writing these words. Can you help me to verify it is an accurate quote or a misattribution? —Jenny via email
Jenny, Facebook and Twitter must be the world’s leading sources of false Churchill quotes, so thanks for questioning this one—which is, for a change, right (although his word was “make,” not “have”)….
From Churchill By Himself page 17:
Free Market
“If you destroy a free market you create a black market.”
—House of Commons, 3 February 1949
Churchill added: “If you make ten thousand regulations you destroy all respect for the law.”
He was arguing against the stifling regulations of industry and commerce by the postwar Labour Government (1945-51). Not a lot new under the sun.
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