Top 400 Quotes & Sayings by Milton Friedman
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American economist Milton Friedman.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property.
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you'll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout?
The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.
The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government. The one thing that's missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash - a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B without A knowing B or B knowing A.
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed?
When government - in pursuit of good intentions - tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system.
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.
The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.
Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good?
If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment.
When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he does't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that's government for you.
Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition.
The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shortage of tomatoes, for example, just pass a law that retailers can't sell tomatoes for more than two cents per pound. Instantly you'll have a tomato shortage. It's the same with oil or gas.
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
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