Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman

27 quotes

The American economist and statistician Milton Friedman is someone whose pithy observations have become part of everyday conversation. The range of their thinking — from Government to Freedom — speaks to an intellectual restlessness that shows in every quote. Our collection holds 40 quotes from Milton Friedman, each offering a different angle on Government, Freedom, Work, Politics, and Society. To get a sense of their style, try: "Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

All Quotes by Milton Friedman

“Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

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

— Milton Friedman

Good

“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.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

“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.”

— Milton Friedman

Freedom

“Inflation is taxation without legislation.”

— Milton Friedman

Finance

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

— Milton Friedman

Government

“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

— Milton Friedman

Politics

“The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that's why it's so essential to preserving individual freedom.”

— Milton Friedman

Freedom

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

— Milton Friedman

Knowledge

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

— Milton Friedman

Government

“The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

“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.”

— Milton Friedman

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.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

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

— Milton Friedman

Power

“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

— Milton Friedman

Government

“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

Government

“The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”

— Milton Friedman

Architecture

“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?”

— Milton Friedman

Society

“Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.”

— Milton Friedman

Freedom

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

— Milton Friedman

Freedom