A Quote by Milton Friedman

Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.

Milton Friedman

Quote Topics

Actions Actual Alive Alternatives Around Available Basic Becomes Believe Change Crisis Depend Develop Existing Function I Believe Ideas Impossible Inevitable Keep Lying Occurs Only Our Perceived Policies Politically Produces Real Real Change Taken Them Until

Quote Author

Milton Friedman
American - Economist
July 31, 1912 - November 16, 2006

Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.

Milton Friedman

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.

Milton Friedman

The moment a large investor doesn't believe a government will pay back its debt when it says it will, a crisis of confidence could develop. Investors have scant patience for the years of good governance - politically fraught fiscal restructuring, austerity and debt rescheduling - it takes to defuse a sovereign-debt crisis.

Andrew Ross Sorkin

In Cuba, what we do not accept is the comparison of our participatory democracy with bourgeois democracy which has not solved anything for humanity. The only thing it has done is to take humanity towards a precarious point. They have created the environmental crisis, the food crisis, the water crisis and the pandemics all over the world. The reason for that is because they have taken the majority of the resources and given it to militarism paid for by the western powers because it is a great business for them; this is the real truth.

Alejandro Castro Espin

The only way that we can disincentivize Central American immigrants from illegally entering our country is if we change our policies, tweak our laws, cut the bureaucratic red tape and immediately send them back to their countries of origin. Until then, this self-imposed crisis will continue to worsen.

Paul Gosar

There has been a banking crisis, a financial crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis, a geostrategic crisis and an environmental crisis. That's considerable in a country that's used to being protected.

Jean-Francois Cope

I don't believe ... global warming is real. Do we have climate change? Yes. Is it a crisis? No. ... Because the science, the real science, doesn't say that we have any major crisis or threat when it comes to climate change.

Herman Cain

We need to make clear that the economic crisis has to be matched by a crisis of ideas. That's the problem, right? The economic crisis is not matched by a crisis of ideas. That's where the war is going to be fought.

Henry Giroux

The planetary emergency unfolding around us is, first and foremost...a crisis of thought, values, perceptions, ideas and judgments. In other words, it is a crisis of mind, which makes it a crisis of those institutions which purport to improve minds.

David W. Orr

Companies that do not actively practice, study, and plan for crisis communications - as well, of course, crisis management - are doomed to fail when a crisis befalls them. Crises are, in a word, inevitable, and those macho companies that think, "it can't happen here," or if it does, "I can handle it," will suffer the hardest failures.

Steven Fink

I believe it is essential for our planetary future to develop tools that can change the consciousness which has created the crisis that we are in.

Stanislav Grof

The crisis of the church is not at its deepest level a crisis of authority, or a crisis of dogmatic theology. It is a crisis of powerlessness in which our sole recourse is to call on the help and inward power of the Holy Spirit.

James K. Baxter

It's difficult when you're an appointee of any administration to publicly come out and say before a crisis occurs to say that we need to do X, Y and Z to avoid a crisis, because you probably wouldn't be around very long if you did that.

Henry Bonilla

Too often, business schools teach academic crisis management theory, if that, but given the diverse and unique nature of crises, all the theory in the world will not help you manage an actual crisis unless you know the basic mechanics.

Steven Fink

I believe that climate change is the great global crisis that we face, environmental crisis. I believe that if you're serious about climate change, you don't encourage the excavation and transportation of very dirty oil.