celebrating milton friedman at 100

Celebrating Milton Friedman at 100: A Tribute in QuotesMilton Friedman passed away in 2006, but his spirit lives on among lovers of economic liberty around the world. There are celebrations taking place in 43

countries and all 50 states to commemorate Friedman at 100.

Celebrating Milton Friedman at 100: A Tribute in Quotes

• “We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes

non-work.”

• “If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara

Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand”

• “Governments never learn. Only people learn.”

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

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


“When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself,

he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it.

When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone

else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but

Somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone

else's money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about

what he buys, but doesn't care at all how much he spends. And

when a man spends someone else's money on someone else, he

doesn't care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And

that's government for you.”


• “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.”

• “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.”

• “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”

• “There's no such thing as a free lunch.”

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

problem.”


• “Most economic fallacies derive - from the tendency to assume

that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the

expense of another”

• “Inflation is taxation without legislation”

• “Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A

much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the

government.”

• “Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of

belief in freedom itself.”

• “Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good

intentions of those who create it.”


• “I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any

excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.”

• “History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for

political freedom”

• The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison

of prediction with experience”

• “Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”

• “The most important single central fact about a free market is that

no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”


• “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.”

• “Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the

effects of mismanagement of government”

• “Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a

majority directive.”

• “Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of

ideas and values to students ... not to provide entertainment for

spectators or employment for athletes.”

• “What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of

social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which

greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system”


• “Of course, we'd like to have another one, .....Though wouldn't it

be better if we learned that we could do without one?”

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

• “One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship”

• “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.”

celebrating milton friedman at 100

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