Milton Friedman Quotes

...theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the realism of their assumptions.

Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the few, and long-term gain for all.

If you really want to engage in policy activity, don't make that your vocation. Make it your avocation. Get a job. Get a secure base of income. Otherwise, you're going to get corrupted and destroyed.

Politicians will always spend every penny of tax raised and whatever else they can get away with.

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed.

The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others.

In a free society, it is hard for 'good' people to do 'good', but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for 'evil' people to do 'evil', especially since one man's good is another's evil

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.

The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B, without A knowing B or B knowing A.

There's no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest. Because he had real principles and he stuck by them. He made clear what he was going to do, and he did it. He didn't back down.

Anybody who was easily converted was not worth converting.

Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative -- the building blocks of success throughout our society.

I am a limited-government libertarian.

Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.

In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work.

Unfortunately, unanimity is not always feasible.

The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help.

You mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.

In the US, the problem is primary and secondary education. We've had such an increase in inequality because a quarter of American kids don't finish high school!

Undoubtedly Internet has reduced the possibilities of taxation. Why should I buy something here if I can buy it from a company in Japan or England or Brazil with a lower tax?

When they so-called 'target the interest rate', what they're doing is controlling the money supply via the interest rate. The interest rate is only an intermediary instrument.

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

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.

I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.

Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.

They think that the cure to big government is to have bigger government... the only effective cure is to reduce the scope of government - get government out of the business.

I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books in its effect, not its intent.

Japan has introduced fiscal stimulus five times in the past seven or eight years and each time it's been a failure and that's not a surprise. Fiscal stimulus is not stimulating in and of itself.

Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.

What would the people who sold us goods do with the money? They'd get dollars. What would they do with the dollars? Eat them?!

The history of mankind is the history of money losing value.

The price works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time.

In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.

If China don't free up the political side, its economic growth will come to an end - while it is still at a very low level.

There is no good way of measuring poverty.

We don't have a desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow.

The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.

I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.

How do you hold down government spending?

A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.

My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek.

The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.

It is a mark of how far we have gone on the road to serfdom that government allocation and rationing of oil is the automatic response to the oil crisis.

The current oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of governmental mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war.

The argument for collectivism is simple; free market is not.

Personal freedom has grown greatly within China, and that will provoke ever more points of conflict between the individual and state.

I believe that the monetary stability is an absolutely critical element in the satisfactory operation of a system.

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.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.