Milton Friedman citations (171 citations, Page 3)

Milton Friedman: 171 citations 0 J'aime

Milton Friedman citations célèbres

“L'existence d'un marché libre n'élimine évidemment pas le besoin de gouvernement. Au contraire, le gouvernement est essentiel, à la fois comme forum pour déterminer les « règles du jeu » et comme arbitre pour interpréter et faire respecter les règles qui ont été adoptées.”

Milton Friedman livre Capitalisme et liberté

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.
en
Capitalisme et liberté, 1962

“Le fond du problème posé par la plupart des critiques de la publicité n'est pas le fait que la publicité manipule les goûts mais le fait que le grand public a des goûts détestables — c'est-à-dire différents des goûts des critiques.”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

“L'inflation est une maladie dangereuse et parfois fatale”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

“La concurrence du marché, quand on la laisse fonctionner, protège le consommateur mieux que tous les mécanismes gouvernementaux venus successivement se superposer au marché”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

“La Réserve Féderale a sans aucun doute causé la Grande Dépression en contractant le volume de l'argent en circulation d'un tiers entre 1929 et 1933.”

Milton Friedman

The Federal Reserve definitely caused the Great Depression by contracting the amount of money in circulation by one-third from 1929 to 1933
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Émissions, Interview radio

“Une des plus grandes erreurs est de juger une politique sur ses intentions et non sur ses résultats.”

Milton Friedman

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results
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Émissions, The Open Mind

“Les grandes avancées de la civilisation, que ce soit dans l'architecture ou dans la peinture, la science ou la littérature, l'industrie ou l'agriculture, ne sont jamais nées de l'intervention d'un gouvernement centralisé.”

Milton Friedman livre Capitalisme et liberté

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
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Capitalisme et liberté, 1962

“Aucune raison ne peut justifier les monopoles d'État sur la poste et l'interdiction faite à n'importe qui d'autre de porter le courrier.”

Milton Friedman

Citations sur la liberté de Milton Friedman

“L'histoire suggère uniquement que le capitalisme est une condition nécessaire à la liberté politique. Clairement ce n'est pas une condition suffisante.”

Milton Friedman livre Capitalisme et liberté

History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
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Capitalisme et liberté, 1962

“Une société qui met l'égalité au dessus de la liberté n'aura ni l'un, ni l'autre. Une société qui met la liberté au dessus de l'égalité aura beaucoup des deux.”

Milton Friedman

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both
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Émissions, Free to choose (émission télévisée)

“Une société qui place l'égalité avant la liberté finira par n'avoir ni égalité ni liberté. [.. ] Une société qui place la liberté avant toutes choses finira par obtenir, sans l'avoir cherché, davantage d'égalité en même temps que davantage de liberté”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

“Il existe une contradiction fondamentale entre l’idéal des « parts équitables » (ou l'idéal dont il dérive : « A chacun selon ses besoins ») et l’idéal de la liberté personnelle. Et cette contradiction a été la plaie de toute tentative de placer l'égalité des résultats comme principe de base de l'organisation sociale. Cela a abouti invariablement à un état de terreur : la Russieur, la Chine et plus récemment le Cambodge en offrent des preuves évidentes et convaincantes”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

“La crainte des contrôles fiscaux, l'étouffement bureaucratique et le harcèlement de l'État constituent des armes puissantes contre la liberté de parole.”

Milton Friedman

La Liberté du choix, 1980

Milton Friedman: Citations en anglais

“It does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug war. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible.
And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs.”

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Milton Friedman

America's Drug Forum interview (1991)

“For both long and short periods there is a consistent though not precise relation between the rate of growth of the quantity of money and the rate of growth of nominal income. If the quantity of money grows rapidly, so will nominal income, and conversely. The relation is much closer for long than for short periods”

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Milton Friedman

Source: Money Mischief (1992), Ch. 2 The Mystery of Money

“Make politics an avocation, not a vocation.”

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Milton Friedman

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)

“There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.”

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Milton Friedman

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

“As liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements. Freedom as a value in this sense has to do with the interrelations among people”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

“The widespread use of the market reduces the strain on the social fabric by rendering conformity unnecessary with respect to any activities it encompasses. The wider the range of activities covered by the market, the fewer are the issues on which explicitly political decisions are required and hence on which it is necessary to achieve agreement. In turn, the fewer the issues on which agreement is necessary, the greater is the likelihood of getting agreement while maintaining a free society.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 24

“There was nothing in these views to repel a student; or to make Keynes attractive. Keynes had nothing to offer those of us who had sat at the feet of Simons, Mints, Knight, and Viner.”

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Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman, "Comments on the Critics", Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 80, No. 5 (Sep. - Oct., 1972)

“Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. … And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold.”

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Milton Friedman

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 contraction from 1929 to 1933 was by far the most severe business-cycle contraction during the near-century of U. S. history we cover and it may well have been the most severe in the whole of U. S. history.”

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Milton Friedman livre A Monetary History of the United States

"The Great Contraction, 1929-1933" (1963), with Anna J. Schwartz
A Monetary History of the United States (1963)

“In the course of General Westmoreland's testimony, he made the statement that he did not want to command an army of mercenaries. I stopped him and said, 'General, would you rather command an army of slaves?' He drew himself up and said, 'I don't like to hear our patriotic draftees referred to as slaves.' I replied, 'I don't like to hear our patriotic volunteers referred to as mercenaries.' But I went on to say, 'If they are mercenaries, then I, sir, am a mercenary professor, and you, sir, are a mercenary general; we are served by mercenary physicians, we use a mercenary lawyer, and we get our meat from a mercenary butcher.”

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Milton Friedman

That was the last that we heard from the general about mercenaries.
Two Lucky People: Memoirs, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (1998) p. 380.

“I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.”

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Milton Friedman

As quoted in The Money Masters (1995)

“The business of business is business.”

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Milton Friedman

Widely attributed to Friedman, and sometimes cited as being in his work Capitalism and Freedom (1962) this is also attributed to Alfred P. Sloan, sometimes with citation of a statement of 1964, but sometimes with attestations to his use of it as a motto as early as 1923.
Disputed

“The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.”

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Milton Friedman

“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“The construction of hypotheses is a creative act of inspiration, intuition, invention; its essence is the vision of something new in familiar material. The process must be discussed in psychological, not logical, categories; studied in autobiographies and biographies, not treatises on scientific method; and promoted by maxim and example, not syllogism or theorem.”

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Milton Friedman

"The Methodology of Positive Economics" (1953)

“The organization of economic activity through voluntary exchange presumes that we have provided, through government, for the maintenance of law and order to prevent coercion of one individual by another, the enforcement of contracts voluntarily entered into, the definition of the meaning of property rights, the interpretation and enforcement of such rights, and the provision of a monetary framework.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 27

“A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man's freedom not interfering with other men's freedom. He believes that this objective requires that power be dispersed. He is suspicious of assigning to government any functions that can be performed through the market, both because this substitutes coercion for voluntary co-operation in the area in question and because, by giving government an increased role, it threatens freedom in other areas.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 3 The Control of Money, p. 39

“There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.”

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Milton Friedman

Interview (10 February 1999) in the video production Take It To The Limits: Milton Friedman on Libertarianism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl_qwo2VIlU.

“Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children. The necessity of drawing a line between responsible individuals and others is inescapable, yet it means that there is an essential ambiguity in our ultimate objective of freedom. Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 33

“Whether it is in the slums of New Delhi or in the affluence of Las Vegas, it simply isn't fair that there should be any losers. Life is unfair — there is nothing fair about one man being born blind and another man being born with sight. There is nothing fair about one man being born of a wealthy parent and one of an impecunious parent. There is nothing fair about Muhammad Ali having been born with a skill that enables him to make millions of dollars one night. There is nothing fair about Marlene Dietrich having great legs that we all want to watch. There is nothing fair about any of that. But on the other hand, don't you think a lot of people who like to look at Marlene Dietrich's legs benefited from nature's unfairness in producing a Marlene Dietrich. What kind of a world would it be if everybody was an absolute identical duplicate of anybody else. You might as well destroy the whole world and just keep one specimen left for a museum. In the same way, it's unfair that Muhammad Ali should be a great fighter and should be able to earn millions. But would it not be even more unfair to the people who like to watch him if you said that in the pursuit of some abstract idea of equality we're not going to let Muhammad Ali get more for one nights fight than the lowest man on the totem pole can get for a days unskilled work on the docks. You can do that but the result of that would be to deny people the opportunity to watch Muhammad Ali. I doubt very much he would be willing to subject himself to the kind of fights he's gone through if he were to get the pay of an unskilled docker.”

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Milton Friedman

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.

“The major disadvantage of the proposed negative income tax is its political implications. It establishes a system under which taxes are imposed on some to pay subsidies to others. And presumably, these others have a vote.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 12 The Alleviation of Poverty, 2002 edition, p. 194

“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals—the technique of the market place.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, pp. 12-13

“A government which maintained law and order, defined property rights, served as a means whereby we could modify property rights and other rules of the economic game, adjudicated disputes about the interpretation of the rules, enforced contracts, promoted competition, provided a monetary framework, engaged in activities to counter technical monopolies and to overcome neighborhood effects widely regarded as sufficiently important to justify government intervention, and which supplemented private charity and the private family in protecting the irresponsible, whether madman or child—such a government would clearly have important functions to perform. The consistent liberal is not an anarchist.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 34

“How much attention is paid to agreement between Galbraith and myself in opposing a draft and favoring an all-volunteer armed force, or in opposing tariffs and favoring free trade, or on a host of other issues? What is newsworthy is that Galbraith endorses wage and price controls, while I oppose them.”

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Milton Friedman

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“Over the period covered by these data, a drastic change has occurred in the responsibilities undertaken by the state to provide assistance to the aged, unemployed and otherwise dependent. This change has had divergent results on the particular data under discussion. The availability of assistance from the state would clearly tend to reduce the need for private reserves and so to reduce private saving—it is equivalent, in terms of our hypothesis, to a reduction in the variance of transitory components.”

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Milton Friedman

A Theory of the Consumption Function (1957)

“Although I wish the anarchists luck, since that’s the way we ought to be moving now. But I believe we need government to enforce the rules of the game. By prosecuting anti-trust violations, for instance. We need a government to maintain a system of courts that will uphold contracts and rule on compensation for damages. We need a government to ensure the safety of its citizens–to provide police protection. But government is failing at a lot of these things that it ought to be doing because it’s involved in so many things it shouldn’t be doing.”

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Milton Friedman

A 1973 Interview with Milton Friedman – Playboy Magazine
“Interview with Milton Friedman”, Playboy magazine (Feb. 1973)

“If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to get this favor - whether those people are large enterprises, or whether they're small businesses like farmers, or whether they're representatives of any other special group. The only way to prevent that is to force them to engage in competition one with the other.”

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Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman - Big Business, Big Government http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_T0WF-uCWg

“The basic problem of social organization is how to co-ordinate the economic activities of large numbers of people.”

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Milton Friedman

Source: (1962), Ch. 1 The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, p. 12

“The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.”

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Milton Friedman

From The Tyranny of Control, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 2 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=2