Milton Friedman Quotes

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.

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

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

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.

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.

Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

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

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

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

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

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.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

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.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

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

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