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Milton Friedman Quotes - Page 2

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You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.

You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.

Milton Friedman
America, World, Economic

Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.

Milton Friedman
Block, Choices, Our Society

Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds.

Milton Friedman
Support, Parent, Liberty
Milton Friedman, William Richard Allen (1983). “Bright promises, dismal performance: an economist's protest”, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc.

Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.

Milton Friedman
Change, Real, Neoliberalism
Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.14, University of Chicago Press

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

Milton Friedman
People, Economics, Values
"Created Equal". PBS "Free to Choose", episode 5, 1980.

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

Milton Friedman
Philosophy, Government, People

There's nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.

Milton Friedman
Liberty, Doe, Libertarian

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

Milton Friedman
Hands, People, Purpose
Free to Choose ch. 5 (1980).

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do.

Milton Friedman
Simple, Principles, Fundamentals

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.

Milton Friedman
Government, Get Away, Taxes

Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing.

Milton Friedman
Jobs, Impossible Things, Promise

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.

Milton Friedman
Hands, Political, Democracy
Milton Friedman, Rose Friedman (1990). “Free to Choose: A Personal Statement”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

One of the reasons that I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government, industrialists take it over.

Milton Friedman
Government, Favors, Reason

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

Milton Friedman
Freedom, Liberty, Libertarian
Milton Friedman, Rose D. Friedman (2002). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.15, University of Chicago Press

The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.

Milton Friedman
Government, Giving

You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes.

Milton Friedman
Government, Two, People

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

Milton Friedman
Freedom, Business, Party

Every economist knows that minimum wages either do nothing or cause inflation and unemployment. That's not a statement, it's a definition.

Milton Friedman
Unemployment, Wages, Investing

Pick at random any three letters from the alphabet, put them in any order, and you will have an acronym designating a federal agency we can do without.

Milton Friedman
Agency, Order, Three

The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.

Milton Friedman
Letting Go, Weed, Loss

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman
Government, Liberty, Libertarian
Quoted in Cleveland Plain Dealer, 27 Oct. 1993

A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.

Milton Friedman
Reality, Skills, Law
Interview, Playboy, Feb. 1973

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Milton Friedman
Market Economy, Free Market, Economy And Economics
Milton Friedman (1990). “Friedman in China”

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.

Milton Friedman
Drug, Roles, Corruption

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.

Milton Friedman
Government, Market Efficiency, Regulation

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