Milton Friedman's Quotes

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?

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.

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

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.

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

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.

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

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

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.