Inspiring Quotes by Milton Friedman
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Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.

If you do not force political freedom, economic freedom will be stymied sooner or later.

Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.

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.

We have a freer world because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changes in China. Those two have been the main contributors to freedom in our time.

I think it's a scandal what has been happening in the school system so far as lower income classes. The dropout rates, the illiteracy rate, you know literacy in the United States was a lot higher in 1890 than it is now.

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

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.

On aging societies, there is no reason why a country that has a lot of old people can't be prosperous if, during their working lives, individuals provide for their retirement.

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?

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

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.

My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used.

Hong Kong is the bellwether. If the Chinese stick to their agreement to let Hong Kong go its own path, then China will also go that way. If they don't, that is a very bad sign. I'm optimistic.

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

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.

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?

One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.

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.

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

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

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

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

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

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

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

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.

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

There's no such thing as a free lunch.