Milton Friedman famous quotes

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #Liberty #Libertarian

If you do not force political freedom, economic freedom will be stymied sooner or later.
-- Milton Friedman

#Political #Economic #Force

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Philosophy #Organization #Greed

In the 1960s, The National Education Association changed its character. The NEA changed into a union. And from that point on you can see deterioration in the quality of schooling in the United States.
-- Milton Friedman

#Character #Quality #Deterioration

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Liberty #Libertarian

My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers. Fortunately, for me personally, that conclusion has had no practical impact, else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honored to receive.
-- Milton Friedman

#Impact #Awards #Sweden

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Motivation #Military #Loss

There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist.
-- Milton Friedman

#Operating Systems #Compare

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
-- Milton Friedman

#Cutting #Liberty #Taxation

China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia.
-- Milton Friedman

#Real #Moving #Taken

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #People #Ordinary

The collapse of communism in essence added tens and tens of millions of people to the world labor supply, and the people who were added had previously been getting very low income, but they were not unskilled. Many of them were fairly well educated.
-- Milton Friedman

#Essence #People #Income

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
-- Milton Friedman

#Years #Government #Political

Money is a very powerful thing, which you hardly notice when it goes right, but which can create havoc when it goes wrong.
-- Milton Friedman

#Powerful #Havoc #Very Powerful

The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the nineteenth century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #People #Liberty

There's no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest. Because he had real principles and he stuck by them. He made clear what he was going to do, and he did it. He didn't back down.
-- Milton Friedman

#Real #Doubt #Mind

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Party #Pie #Liberty

The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Problem #Bigs

Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them.
-- Milton Friedman

#Trying #Way #Firsts

Rich people are the experimental ground for every new development. The nature of progress is that what begins as a luxury for the rich becomes a necessity for the poor as it's developed and passed on.
-- Milton Friedman

#Luxury #People #Progress

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
-- Milton Friedman

#Civilization #Agriculture #Government

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Income #Concerned

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
-- Milton Friedman

#Civilization #Government #Achievement

He moves fastest who moves alone.
-- Milton Friedman

#Moving

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
-- Milton Friedman

#Philosophy #Government #People

You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.
-- Milton Friedman

#World #Marxist #University

Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.
-- Milton Friedman

#Different

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.
-- Milton Friedman

#Cutting #Government #Enough

The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago.
-- Milton Friedman

#Country #Educational #School

I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. The reason I am is because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, 'How do you hold down government spending? The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes
-- Milton Friedman

#Believe #Cutting #Thinking

Richard Nixon was a very intelligent and able man. And he had the right ideas. But he did not have the adherence to principles that [Ronald] Reagan had. He did some very good things. We owe to Richard Nixon the volunteer army - he got rid of the draft. And that was a major increase in freedom.
-- Milton Friedman

#Army #Intelligent #Men

I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R'. And I am a Republican with a capital 'R' on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
-- Milton Friedman

#Libertarian #Principles #Republican

You mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.
-- Milton Friedman

#Judging #Politician #Performances

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Political #Cynical

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
-- Milton Friedman

#Society #Liberty #Libertarian

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Thinking #People #Giving

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Hate #Color #People

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
-- Milton Friedman

#Country #Mean #Men

You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Two #People

The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Giving

The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #People #Different

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Political #Debt

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintainence of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tenticles and get bad results elsewhere.
-- Milton Friedman

#Self #Evil #People

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Games #Umpires

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
-- Milton Friedman

#Mistake #Judging #Politics

For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number--for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs--jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.
-- Milton Friedman

#Jobs #Real #Mean

There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Buying #Harm

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
-- Milton Friedman

#Games #Long #Competition

The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them.
-- Milton Friedman

#Jobs #Numbers #People

Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man!
-- Milton Friedman

#Beautiful #Mean #Men

There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.
-- Milton Friedman

#Business #Responsibility #Games

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. ... A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society.
-- Milton Friedman

#Country #Perfect #Heaven

If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to get this favor - whether those people are large enterprises, or whether they're small businesses like farmers, or whether they're representatives of any other special group. The only way to prevent that is to force them to engage in competition one with the other.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #People #Giving

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #Equality #Politics

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Army #Jail #Alcohol

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.
-- Milton Friedman

#War #Government #Views

You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
-- Milton Friedman

#Enterprise

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #Business #Party

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.
-- Milton Friedman

#Trying #Liberty #Triumph

The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
-- Milton Friedman

#Letting Go #Weed #Loss

There's no such thing as a free lunch.
-- Milton Friedman

#Lunch #Economics

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Hands #People #Purpose

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
-- Milton Friedman

#Business #Political #Taxation

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
-- Milton Friedman

#History #Political #Capitalism

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #People #Together

Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune.
-- Milton Friedman

#Country #Cheer #Leader

Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #Mean #Achievement

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman

#Politics #Hell #Fury

When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction...
-- Milton Friedman

#Years #Two #Looks

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
-- Milton Friedman

#Statistics #Tests #Hypothesis

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.
-- Milton Friedman

#Teenager #Book #Law

A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
-- Milton Friedman

#Reality #Law #Skills

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#People #Drug #Favors

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
-- Milton Friedman

#Self #Political #Economic

I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural right to property, and giving individuals a sense that they own something that they’re responsible for, that they have control over, and that they can dispose of.
-- Milton Friedman

#Thinking #Law #Giving

So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.
-- Milton Friedman

#Responsibility #Law #Answers

With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
-- Milton Friedman

#Favors #Notable #Businessman

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

#Change #Real #Lying

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Thinking #Issues #Government

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a ***** cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons
-- Milton Friedman

#Marijuana #Thinking #Government

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?
-- Milton Friedman

#Thinking #People #Political

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?
-- Milton Friedman

#Running #Thinking #Russia

The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.
-- Milton Friedman

#People #Way #Solve

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.
-- Milton Friedman

#Men #Liberty #Care

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Thank God #Waste

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.
-- Milton Friedman

#Investing #Columbus #Majority

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated — a system of checks and balances.
-- Milton Friedman

#Freedom #Mean #Men

There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
-- Milton Friedman

#Liberty #Doe #Good Intentions

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.
-- Milton Friedman

The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits
-- Milton Friedman

#Responsibility #Social #Profit

Even the most ardent environmentalist doesn't really want to stop pollution. If he thinks about it, and doesn't just talk about it, he wants to have the right amount of pollution. We can't really afford to eliminate it - not without abandoning all the benefits of technology that we not only enjoy but on which we depend.
-- Milton Friedman

#Technology #Thinking #Want

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.
-- Milton Friedman

#Mean #Effectiveness #Use

The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.
-- Milton Friedman

#Home #Competition #Alternatives

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
-- Milton Friedman

#Economics #Phenomenon #Inflation

Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.
-- Milton Friedman

#Moving #School #Jealous

How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plan.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Becoming #Protect

The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Limits #Problem

Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and non-users alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
-- Milton Friedman

#Drug #Tragedy #Use

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there's something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.
-- Milton Friedman

#Moving #Simple #Thinking

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
-- Milton Friedman

#Government #Get Away #Taxes