I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression. Milton Friedman More Quotes by Milton Friedman More Quotes From Milton Friedman A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing others. It does not prevent some people from achieving positions of privilege, but so long as freedom is maintained, it prevents those positions of privilege from becoming institutionalized; they are subject to continued attack by other able, ambitious people. Milton Friedman ambitiouslongpeople Governments never learn. Only people learn. Milton Friedman governmentphilosophypeople The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up. Milton Friedman governmentlimitsproblem In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment. Milton Friedman suggestionsunemploymentends Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It is made by or stopped by the central bank. Milton Friedman inflationphenomenonmade Never try to walk across a river just because it has an average depth of four feet. Milton Friedman feetriversaverage A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development. Milton Friedman principlesrealgold 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. Milton Friedman governmenthurtpeople I'm not in favor of no government. You do need a government. But by doing so many things that the government has no business doing, it cannot do those things which it alone can do well. There's no other institution in my opinion that can provide us with protection of our life and liberty. However, the government performs that basic function poorly today, precisely because it is devoting too much of its efforts and spending too much of our income on things which are harmful. So I have no doubt that that's the major single problem we face. Milton Friedman effortgovernmentdoubt I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. Milton Friedman favorsdrugpeople Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power. The kind of economic organization that provides economic freedom directly, namely, competitive capitalism, also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other Milton Friedman politicalorganizationmean The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system. Milton Friedman economicpossibilityresources When something goes wrong, the natural tendency is to say, "By God, we need to pass a law and do something." Milton Friedman lawnaturalneeds Plato assumes somehow that government is a way in which you put unselfish and ungreedy men in charge of selfish and greedy men. But government is an institution whereby the people who have the greatest drive to get power over their fellow men, get in a position of controlling them. Look at the record of government. Where are these philosopher kings that Plato supposedly was trying to develop? Milton Friedman selfishplatokings Had drugs been decriminalized, crack would never have been invented and there would today be fewer addicts... The ghettos would not be drug-and-crime-infested no-man's lands... Colombia, Bolivia and Peru would not be suffering from narco-terror, and we would not be distorting our foreign policy because of it. Milton Friedman ghettolandmen The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system. Milton Friedman greedorganizationphilosophy You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes. Milton Friedman governmenttwopeople The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience. Milton Friedman predictionsstatisticstests Socialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back. Milton Friedman governmentcouplemean The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes. Milton Friedman issuesgovernmentthinking
