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Milton Friedman

165 quotes

• “You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. I believe our government is too large and intrusive, that we do not get our money's worth for the roughly 40 percent of our income that is spent by government … How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For government, that means cutting taxes.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and other big government Republicans hijacked the conservative cause (2006) by Richard A Viguerie, p. 46

• “Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be wrong, but all of which ultimately point to the right answer. Now Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis. That doesn't mean that he wasn't a great man!”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in Opinion Journal (22 July 2006)

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Speaking at a meeting of the American Economic Association, as quoted by Walter Block in "Milton Friedman RIP" in Mises Daily (16 November 2006)

• “If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in "Milton Friedman's Last Lunch" at Forbes.com (11 December 2006)

• “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. And the thing that I will really be proud of is if some of the work I have done is still cited in the text books long after I am gone.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in The Power of Choice (January 2007)

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People? (2009) by John Mitchinson, p. 87

• “There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Preface (1982 edition), p. ix

• “President Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you —ask what you can do for your country.’… Neither half of that statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. ‘What your country can do for you’ implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. ‘What you can do for your country’ assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “By relying primarily on voluntary co-operation and private enterprise, in both economic and other activities, we can insure that the private sector is a check on the powers of the governmental sector and an effective protection of freedom of speech, of religion, and of thought.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements. Freedom as a value in this sense has to do with the interrelations among people”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The liberal conceives of men as imperfect beings. He regards the problem of social organization to be as much a negative problem of preventing 'bad' people from doing harm as of enabling 'good' people to do good; and, of course, 'bad' and 'good' people may be the same people, depending on who is judging them.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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 co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, p. 15

• “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.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15

• “The widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric by rendering conformity unnecessary with respect to any activities it encompasses. The wider the range of activities covered by the market, the fewer are the issues on which explicitly political decisions are required and hence on which it is necessary to achieve agreement. In turn, the fewer the issues on which agreement is necessary, the greater is the likelihood of getting agreement while maintaining a free society.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The need for government in these respects arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government, for the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another, the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into, the definition of the meaning of property rights, the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and the provision of a monetary framework.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children. The necessity of drawing a line between responsible individuals and others is inescapable, yet it means that there is an essential ambiguity in our ultimate objective of freedom. Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The Great Depression in the United States, far from being a sign of the inherent instability of the private enterprise system, is a testament to how much harm can be done by mistakes on the part of a few men when they wield vast power over the monetary system of a country.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The major disadvantage of the proposed negative income tax is its political implications. It establishes a system under which taxes are imposed on some to pay subsidies to others. And presumably, these others have a vote.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 12 The Alleviation of Poverty, 2002 edition, p. 194

• “The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights, subject only to the proviso that he not interfere with the freedom of other individuals to do the same. This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 12 The Alleviation of Poverty, 2002 edition, p. 195

• “An income tax intended to reduce inequality and promote the diffusion of wealth has in practice fostered reinvestment of corporate earnings, thereby favoring the growth of large corporations, inhibiting the operation of the capital market, and discouraging the establishment of new enterprises.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Ch. 13 Conclusion, 2002 edition, p. 198

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

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The contraction from 1929 to 1933 was by far the most severe business-cycle contraction during the near-century of U.S. history we cover and it may well have been the most severe in the whole of U.S. history.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Great Contraction, 1929-1933" (1963), with Anna J. Schwartz

  Also quoted by: Anna Schwartz

• “The key need in policy-setting is to reverse the growth of government!”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The elementary fact is that ‘business’ does not and cannot pay taxes. Only people can pay taxes. Corporate officials may sign the check, but the money that they forward to Internal Revenue comes from the corporation’s employees, customers, or stockholders.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “We have heard much these past few years of how the government protects the consumer. A far more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “A military draft is undesirable and unnecessary. We can and should man our armed forces with volunteers—as the United States has traditionally done except in major wars.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In a free society, a government has no business using the power of the law or the taxpayer's money to propagandize for some views and to prevent the transmission of others.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There is an invisible hand in politics that operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The old saw is that the Quakers went to the New World to do good and ended up doing well. Today, well-meaning reformers go to Washington to do good and end up doing harm.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The draft is inequitable because irrelevant considerations play so large a role in determining who serves. It is wasteful because deferment of students, fathers, and married men jams colleges, raises the birth rate, and fuels divorce court. It is inconsistent with a free society because it exacts compulsory service from some and limits the freedom of others to travel abroad, emigrate, or even to talk and act freely. So long as compulsion is retained, these defects are inevitable.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: p. 189 (1975 edition)

• “What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but “business” as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The difficulty of exercising “social responsibility” illustrates, of course, the great virtue of private competitive enterprise — it forces people to be responsible for their own actions and makes it difficult for them to “exploit” other people for either selfish or unselfish purposes. They can do good—but only at their own expense.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In a free society, it is hard for “good” people to do “good,” but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for “evil” people to do “evil,” especially since one man's good is anther's evil.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What kind of society isn’t structured on greed?... So the problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm. It seems to me that the great virtue of capitalism is that it’s that kind of system. Because under capitalism, the power of any one individual over his fellow man is relatively small.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.”

  Milton Friedman (1912–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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