Quotes from Milton Friedman

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students, not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

Instead of Lincoln's government of the people, by the people, and for the people, we now have a government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats, including the elected representatives who have become bureaucrats.

Why is it that able, public-spirited people produce such different results according to whether they operate in the political or the economic market? Why is it that if a random sample of the people who read this essay and are not at present in Washington were to replace those who are in Washington, our policies would very likely not be improved? That is the real puzzle for me.

The Motor Carrier Act of 1935 gave the ICC jurisdiction over truckers—to protect the railroads, not the consumers.

Thomas Moore estimates that their aggregate value in 1972 was between $2 and $3 billion6—a value that corresponds solely to a government-granted monopoly position. It constitutes wealth for the people who own the certificates, but for the society as a whole it is a measure of the loss from government intervention, not a measure of productive capacity.

There is only one social responsibility of business - to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits without deception or fraud.

What kind of society isn't structured on greed? 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.

Inflation is one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.

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

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

One man's opportunism is another man's statesmanship.

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Columbus did not seek a new route to the Indies in response to a majority directive.

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.

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

Making prohibition work is like making water run uphill; it's against nature.

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don't be surprised if you get unemployment.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

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

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.

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.