Milton Friedman Quotes

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

Politics, Government, Put

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Milton Friedman

Good, Power, Create

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

Society, Work, System

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, History, Free

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
Milton Friedman

Government, Bad, Problem

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

Politics, Good, Government

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

Government, Problem, Protect

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.
Milton Friedman

Great, Government, Depression

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

Government, Science, Greatest

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.
Milton Friedman

Great, Government, Self

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

Finance, Reason, Possible

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

Government, Nothing, Temporary

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

Another, Economic, Party

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

Freedom, Friend, Liberty

Inflation is taxation without legislation.
Milton Friedman

Finance, Inflation, Taxation

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, Together, Through

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

Work, Government, Political

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

Political, American, Choose

Governments never learn. Only people learn.
Milton Friedman

Government, Learn

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

Themselves, Values, System

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Milton Friedman

Freedom, Free, Against

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
Milton Friedman

Knowledge, Ideas, Values

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

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

Important, Single, Free

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

Greed, Problem, Social

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Biography

Nationality: American

Type: Economist

Born: July 31, 1912

Died: November 16, 2006

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Cite this Page: Citation

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