Milton Friedman quotes - page 7

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people. (Milton Friedman)
Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive. View quote
Milton Friedman
One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship. View quote
Milton Friedman
Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes. View quote
Milton Friedman
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? View quote
Milton Friedman
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. View quote
Milton Friedman
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? View quote
Milton Friedman
You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others. And what ultimately happens when you aim for equality is that A and B decide what C should do for D, except that they take a bit of commission off on the way. View quote
Milton Friedman
The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. ... Government can never duplicate the variety and diversity of individual action. View quote
Milton Friedman
The view has been gaining widespread acceptance that corporate officials and labor leaders have a "social responsibility"... beyond serving the interests of their stockholders or their members. This view shows a fundamental misconception of the character of a free economy. In such an economy there is one and only one social 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, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception fraud. Similarly, the "social responsibility" of labor leaders is to serve the interests of the members of their unions. It is the responsibility of the rest of us to establish a framework of law such that an individual... is, to quote Adam Smith... "led by an invisible hand... I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good." View quote
Milton Friedman
The term money has two very different meanings in popular discourse. We often speak of someone "making money," when we really mean that he or she is receiving an income. We do not mean that he or she has a printing press in the basement churning out greenbacked pieces of paper. In this use, money is a synonym for income or receipts; it refers to a flow, to income or receipts per week or per year. We also speak of someone's having money in his or her pocket or in a safe-deposit box or on deposit at a bank. In that use, money refers to an asset, a component of one's total wealth. Put differently, the first use refers to an item on a profit-and-loss statement, the second to an item on a balance sheet. (Milton Friedman)
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 : the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. View quote
Milton Friedman
The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things. View quote
Milton Friedman
The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? View quote
Milton Friedman
The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. View quote
Milton Friedman
There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise ... and yet we need taxes. View quote
Milton Friedman
Now, when anybody starts talking about this [an all-volunteer force] he immediately shifts language. My army is 'volunteer,' your army is 'professional,' and the enemy's army is 'mercenary.' All these three words mean exactly the same thing. I am a volunteer professor, I am a mercenary professor, and I am a professional professor. And all you people around here are mercenary professional people. And I trust you realize that. It's always a puzzle to me why people should think that the term 'mercenary' somehow has a negative connotation. View quote
Milton Friedman
In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work. View quote
Milton Friedman
The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. View quote
Milton Friedman
Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. View quote
Milton Friedman
The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. (Milton Friedman)
On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions. View quote
Milton Friedman
In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago. View quote
Milton Friedman
The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. View quote
Milton Friedman
I am a libertarian with a small "l" and a Republican with a capital "R". View quote
Milton Friedman