Milton Friedman Quotes

Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to pr...

The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make...

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

There is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can...

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literatur...

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

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

We economists don't know much, but we do know how to create a shortage. If you want to create a shor...

I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government...

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

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

Inflation is taxation without legislation.

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

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must b...

Given greater freedom about where to send their children, parents of a kind would flock together and...

Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whate...

The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argumen...

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up ...

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activi...

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free ...

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

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of govern...

I am a libertarian with a small 'l' and a Republican with a capital 'R'. And I am a Republican with ...

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is...

Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russ...

Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States int...

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far ...

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now i...

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

For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self-evident that the creation of jobs is a desir...

Social responsibility is a fundamentally subversive doctrine" in a free society, and have said that ...

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of gov...

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it'...

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

I have been enormously impressed by the role that pure chance plays in determining our life history....

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equ...

There is only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities ...

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mis...

The great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary...

These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even h...

I think that nothing is so important for freedom as recognizing in the law each individual’s natural...

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization ...

Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they...

Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think R...

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