Famous Quotes & Sayings

Milton Friedman

I am a limited-government libertarian.

Milton Friedman

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

Milton Friedman

There's only one thing that all of the central banks control and that is the base, their own liability, and they can control that in various ways. They can control it directly by open market operations, buying and selling government securities or other assets, for example, buying and selling gold, or they can control it indirectly by altering the rate at which banks lend to one another.

Milton Friedman

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

Milton Friedman

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.

Milton Friedman

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

Milton Friedman

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Milton Friedman

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

Milton Friedman

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman

If you spend your own money on yourself, you care how much you spend and how well you spend it. If you spend your own money on someone else, you care how much you spend, but you don't care how well it is spent. If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you don't care how much you spend, but you do care how well it is spent. And finally, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you don't care how much you spend, and you don't care how well it is spent. That is government.

Milton Friedman

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

The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the nineteenth 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.

Milton Friedman

The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.

Milton Friedman

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.

Milton Friedman

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

Milton Friedman

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income.

Milton Friedman

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.

Milton Friedman

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

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

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.

Milton Friedman

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.

Milton Friedman

The Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy or a result of the failure of the market system as was widely interpreted. It was instead a consequence of a very serious government failure, in particular a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do.

Milton Friedman

How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plan.

Milton Friedman

I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.

Milton Friedman

The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.

Milton Friedman

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

Mike DeWine

In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice.

Nathan Deal

In his 4 years in the White House, President Carter worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.

Ivan Krastev

As a rule, governments monitor people.

H. L. Mencken

I know of no existing nation that deserves to live, and I know of very few individuals.

H. L. Mencken

There has been no organized effort to keep government down since Jefferson's day. Ever since then the American people have been bolstering up its powers and giving it more and more jurisdiction over their affairs. They pay for that folly in increased taxes and diminished liberties.