“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
Tyranny of the Status Quo, San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (1980) p. 115
Works
Capitalism and Freedom
Milton Friedman
Free to Choose
Milton FriedmanA Monetary History of the United States
Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman:
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Famous Milton Friedman Quotes
As quoted in Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and other big government Republicans hijacked the conservative cause (2006) by Richard A Viguerie, p. 46 <!-- similar to statement previously dated (16 September 2003) — but linked page indicates "interview" by John Hawkins dated 25 February 2012 http://www.rightwingnews.com/interviews/friedman.php : I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. The question is, "How do you hold down government spending?" Government spending now amounts to close to 40% of national income not counting indirect spending through regulation and the like. If you include that, you get up to roughly half. The real danger we face is that number will creep up and up and up. The only effective way I think to hold it down, is to hold down the amount of income the government has. The way to do that is to cut taxes. -->
Context: I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible. … because I believe the big problem is not taxes, the big problem is spending. I believe our government is too large and intrusive, that we do not get our money's worth for the roughly 40 percent of our income that is spent by government … How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For government, that means cutting taxes.
The National Times, Australia, (March 1, 1977)
"Bureaucracy Scorned" in Newsweek (29 December 1975), later published in Bright Promises, Dismal Performance : An Economist's Protest (1983)
Milton Friedman Quotes about people
“Society doesn't have values. People have values.”
From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5.
As quoted in If Ignorance Is Bliss, Why Aren't There More Happy People? (2009) by John Mitchinson, p. 87
Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15
“Governments never learn. Only people learn.”
Statement made in 1980, as quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary Of Amoral Advice (1984), by Jonathon Green, p. 77
Source: An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966), p. 107
Milton Friedman Quotes about freedom
From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5.
Variant: The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.
Source: (1962), Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 39
Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 33
Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12
Milton Friedman: Trending quotes
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
The case for is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?
The Counter-Revolution in Monetary Theory (1970) <!-- ([[w:Institute of Economic Affairs
Context: Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output. … A steady rate of monetary growth at a moderate level can provide a framework under which a country can have little inflation and much growth. It will not produce perfect stability; it will not produce heaven on earth; but it can make an important contribution to a stable economic society.
Milton Friedman Quotes
Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 10
Context: Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like : the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.
History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" in The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970) http://www.colorado.edu/studentgroups/libertarians/issues/friedman-soc-resp-business.html
Context: On the level of political principle, the imposition of taxes and the expenditure of tax proceeds are governmental functions. We have established elaborate constitutional, parliamentary and judicial provisions to control these functions, to assure that taxes are imposed so far as possible in accordance with the preferences and desires of the public — after all, "taxation without representation" was one of the battle cries of the American Revolution. We have a system of checks and balances to separate the legislative function of imposing taxes and enacting expenditures from the executive function of collecting taxes and administering expenditure programs and from the judicial function of mediating disputes and interpreting the law.
Here the businessman — self-selected or appointed directly or indirectly by stockholders — is to be simultaneously legislator, executive and, jurist. He is to decide whom to tax by how much and for what purpose, and he is to spend the proceeds — all this guided only by general exhortations from on high to restrain inflation, improve the environment, fight poverty and so on and on.
Fox News interview (May 2004)
Context: There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40% of our national income.
As quoted in The Times Herald, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1 December 1978)
Context: There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.
“There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes.”
As quoted in The Times Herald, Norristown, Pennsylvania (1 December 1978)
Context: There's a sense in which all taxes are antagonistic to free enterprise … and yet we need taxes. We have to recognize that we must not hope for a Utopia that is unattainable. I would like to see a great deal less government activity than we have now, but I do not believe that we can have a situation in which we don't need government at all. We do need to provide for certain essential government functions — the national defense function, the police function, preserving law and order, maintaining a judiciary. So the question is, which are the least bad taxes? In my opinion the least bad tax is the property tax on the unimproved value of land, the Henry George argument of many, many years ago.
Interview with on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)
Context: I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tentacles and get bad results elsewhere.
About changing congress http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac9j15eig_w (c. 1977)
Context: It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.
Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
“Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible.”
"The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits" in The New York Times Magazine (13 September 1970)
Context: The political principle that underlies the is unanimity. In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate. There are no values, no "social" responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form.
The political principle that underlies the political mechanism is conformity. The individual must serve a more general social interest — whether that be determined by a church or a dictator or a majority. The individual may have a vote and say in what is to be done, but if he is overruled, he must conform. It is appropriate for some to require others to contribute to a general whether they wish to or not.
Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible. There are some respects in which conformity appears unavoidable, so I do not see how one can avoid the use of the political mechanism altogether.
Introduction
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom. Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.
“The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government.”
Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 15
Context: The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.
“I am a libertarian with a small "l" and a Republican with a capital "R".”
Charlie Rose Show (November 2005) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-921891628093252478&q=tvshow%3ACharlie_Rose
Context: I am a libertarian with a small "l" and a Republican with a capital "R". And I am a Republican with a capital "R" on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
“That was surely my greatest triumph of the year at Cambridge!”
Two Lucky People
Context: Joan Robinson, a leading Keynesian and radical, produced a specimen for me to analyze. I said something like, "This is obviously the writing of a foreigner, so it's difficult for me to analyze. But I would say it is written by someone who had considerable artistic but not much intellectual talent." It turned out to be the handwriting of Lydia Lopokova, the world-famous Russian ballerina whom Keynes had married. That was surely my greatest triumph of the year at Cambridge!
Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, 2002 edition, page 10
Context: Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like : the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery. The nineteenth century and early twentieth century in the Western world stand out as striking exceptions to the general trend of historical development. Political freedom in this instance clearly came along with the free market and the development of capitalist institutions. So also did political freedom in the golden age of Greece and in the early days of the Roman era.
History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Context: It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users.
Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.
As quoted in The Power of Choice (January 2007)
Context: The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. And the thing that I will really be proud of is if some of the work I have done is still cited in the text books long after I am gone.
Preface (1982 edition), p. ix
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Context: There is enormous inertia—a tyranny of the status quo—in private and especially governmental arrangements. Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.
Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Source: (1962), Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 50
Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", page 13
Context: The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
"Milton Friedman" in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
Lecture "The Suicidal Impulse of the Business Community" (1983); cited in Filters Against Folly (1985) by Garrett Hardin ISBN 067080410X
Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 5 “Created Equal”, p. 147
“The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.”
Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg
Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money
Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money
“One reason why money is a mystery to so many is the role of myth or fiction or convention.”
Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money
Source: (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion, 2002 edition, p. 198
Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 "The Power of the Market", p. 14
Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money
Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg
"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)
Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 13 Conclusion
Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)
Source: Capitalism and Freedom (1962), Ch. 6 The Role of Government in Education, p. 95
As quoted in The Money Masters (1995)
“You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.”
Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)
Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money
“Make politics an avocation, not a vocation.”
As quoted in “Milton Friedman: A Tribute” https://original.antiwar.com/henderson/2006/11/20/milton-friedman-a-tribute/, David R. Henderson, antiwar.com, (Nov. 20, 2006), told to Henderson (May, 1970)
From Who protects the consumer?, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 7 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=7
Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 24
Milton Friedman, "Comments on the Critics", Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 80, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1972)
Speaking at a meeting of the American Economic Association, as quoted by Walter Block in "Milton Friedman RIP" in Mises Daily (16 November 2006) http://mises.org/story/2393
"The Great Contraction, 1929-1933" (1963), with Anna J. Schwartz
A Monetary History of the United States (1963)
