“There is no greater harm than that of time wasted.”
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) Italian sculptor, painter, architect and poet
“I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.”
Interview with Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (7 December 1975)
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Milton Friedman158
American economist, statistician, and writer 1912–2006Related quotes
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
Letter to Thomas Cooper (29 November 1802)
1800s, First Presidential Administration (1801–1805)
Variant: If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy.
“Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?”
Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
Source: Vorkosigan Saga, Shards of Honor (1986), Chapter 3 (p. 41)
“Thank God men cannot fly, and lay waste the sky as well as the earth.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer
Source: The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer
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?
Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet
Thoughts and Aphorisms (1913), Karma
“I only want the government to do the things that you can't do without the government.”
Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader
Text of television interview with Mike Wallace, New York, New York, October 17 and 18, 1960, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 328
1950s, Television interview with Mike Wallace (1960)