Quotes from Milton Friedman

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

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.

Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.

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

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 plant.

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater.

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

I think almost every economist would agree that government gets itself in trouble when it tries to interfere with voluntary behavior.

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 greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Reality ensures that the end of history will never come.

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.

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

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.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

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

Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed?

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

Positive economics is in principle independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgment...In short, positive economics is or can be an "objective" science.

The essential notion of a capitalist society ... is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.