Milton Friedman quotes - page 2

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)
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. View quote
Milton Friedman
A society that puts equality... ahead of freedom will end up with neither. View quote
Milton Friedman
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. View quote
Milton Friedman
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
Society doesn't have values. People have values. View quote
Milton Friedman
We don´t have a desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow. View quote
Milton Friedman
In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned." View quote
Milton Friedman
The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did. (Milton Friedman)
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves. View quote
Milton Friedman
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power. View quote
Milton Friedman
They think that the cure to big government is to have bigger government... the only effective cure is to reduce the scope of government - get government out of the business. View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business. View quote
Milton Friedman
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves. View quote
Milton Friedman
Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. ... And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold. View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend. (Milton Friedman)
Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U. S. is now 45 percent socialist. View quote
Milton Friedman
If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough. View quote
Milton Friedman
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman