Milton Friedman Quotes by Wisdom-of-the-Wise.com

"Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."

"Inflation is taxation without legislation."

"Governments never learn. Only people learn."

"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

"There's a smokestack on the back of every government program."

"I am a libertarian with a small l and a Republican with a capital R."

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

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

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

"Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men."

"History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"What kind of society isn't structured on greed? 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 system."

"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."

"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."

"Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery."

"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."

"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."

"Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace."

"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, 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% of our national income."

Compiled by Thomas George
editor@Wisdom-of-the-Wise.com