“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.”

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 1 “The Power of the Market”, p. 24

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its conditi…" by Milton Friedman?

Milton Friedman158

American economist, statistician, and writer 1912–2006

Related quotes

“If direct responsibility for Vietnam rests with the United States, in the Middle East direct responsibility rests not with the United States but with the Soviet Union”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

and with Britain in 1948 and 1956
Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Vietnam and the Middle East

“Why is it nobody understands me and everybody likes me?”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

As quoted in New York Times article "The Einstein Theory of Living; At 65 he leads the simplest of lives — and grapples with the most complex thoughts." http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00713FA3A58157A93C0A81788D85F408485F9 (12 March 1944) Variants: Why is it that nobody understands me, yet everybody likes me? As quoted in The Dark Side of Shakespeare : An Elizabethan Courtier, Diplomat, Spymaster, & Epic Hero, p. 126 https://books.google.com/books?id=-5SxGKrTRUEC&pg=PA126 (2003) by W. Ron Hess Everyone likes me, yet nobody understands me. As quoted in "The culture of Einstein" at MSNBC (18 March 2005) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/ 1940s

“Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.”

Lev Grossman The Magician King

Source: The Magician King

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Paragraph 1 (p. 7 of Welcome to the Monkey House)
Welcome to the Monkey House (1968), "Harrison Bergeron" (1961)

“Work a lifetime to pay off a house — You finally own it and there's nobody to live in it.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Willy
Death of a Salesman (1949)

“When that power of the working class is once achieved, as it has been only in the Soviet Union, I am for maintaining it by any means whatever. Dictatorship is the obvious means in a world of enemies at home and abroad. I dislike it in principle as dangerous to its own objects. But the Soviet Union has already created liberties far greater than exist elsewhere in the world. They are liberties that most closely affect the lives of the people — power in the trade unions, in peasant organizations, in the cultural life of nationalities, freedom of women in public and private life, and a tremendous development of education for adults and children.”

Roger Nash Baldwin (1884–1981) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) co-founder

Article from Soviet Russia Today

“Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.”

Doris Lessing (1919–2013) British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer and short story writer

Salon interview (1997)

“To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences.”

J. William Fulbright (1905–1995) American politician

Cap. X - Bay of Pigs: On March 29, 1961 Senator Fulbright gave Kennedy a memorandum opposing moral and legal grounds.
A Thousand Days:John F.Kennedy in the White House (1965)

“Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

Source: Claudius the God (1935), Ch. 6.
Context: Nobody is familiar with his own profile, and it comes as a shock, when one sees it in a portrait, that one really looks like that to people standing beside one. For one's full face, because of the familiarity that mirrors give it, a certain toleration and even affection is felt; but I must say that when I first saw the model of the gold piece that the mint-masters were striking for me I grew angry and asked whether it was intended to be a caricature. My little head with its worried face perched on my long neck, and the Adam's apple standing out almost like a second chin, shocked me. But Messalina said: "No, my dear, that's really what you look like. In fact, it is rather flattering than otherwise."

“Why can't somebody give us a list of things that everybody thinks and nobody says, and another list of things that everybody says and nobody thinks?”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Source: The Professor at the Breakfast Table (1859), Ch. VI.

“When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union — like public housing in the United States — look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Milton Friedman158

Related quotes

Related topics