Milton Friedman was an American economist who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and the complexity of stabilization policy. He developed numerous free-market theories that opposed the views of traditional Keynesian economists. Most notable Milton Friedman quotes will enrich your views on the economy, business, government, and life.
If you’re searching for classic life quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of Thomas Sowell quotes, and Peter Drucker quotes.
Most Famous Milton Friedman Quotes
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned. Milton Friedman
When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he doesn’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you. Milton Friedman
You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder. Milton Friedman
The essential notion of capitalist society is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force. Milton Friedman
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. 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
What makes it economics most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do. Milton Friedman
Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost comes in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. The government should be a referee, not an active player. 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
You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do. Milton Friedman
Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own. Milton Friedman
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. Milton Friedman
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation. Milton Friedman
So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving a lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. Milton Friedman
You know there are very few Marxists left in the world, they’re all in American universities. 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
If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment. Milton Friedman
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. Milton Friedman Quotes
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. 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
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself. Milton Friedman
Why have we had such a decline in the moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good? Milton Friedman
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. 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 the 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 that are harmful. So I have no doubt that that’s the major single problem we face. Milton Friedman
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible. Milton Friedman
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. Milton Friedman
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with. Milton Friedman
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government. Milton Friedman
The essential notion of a capitalist society, is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force. 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
A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. Milton Friedman
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government union industry cartels, or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit and loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succeed, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline. Milton Friedman
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program. Milton Friedman
Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised. Milton Friedman
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Milton Friedman
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
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. Milton Friedman
Is it really true that political self interest is nobler somehow than economic self interest? Milton Friedman
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. Milton Friedman
A minimum wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills. Milton Friedman
Why have we had such a decline in moral climate? I submit to you that a major factor has been a change in the philosophy which has been dominant, a change from belief in individual responsibility to belief in social responsibility. If you adopt the view that a man is not responsible for his own behavior, that somehow society is responsible, why should he seek to make his behavior good? Milton Friedman
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. Milton Friedman
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Milton Friedman
There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions. Milton Friedman
You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do. Milton Friedman
You know there are very few Marxists left in the world they’re all in American universities. Milton Friedman
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. Milton Friedman
Society doesn’t have values. People have values. Milton Friedman
I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office. Milton Friedman
Had drugs been decriminalized, the 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
A society that puts equality in the sense of equality of outcome ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. Milton Friedman
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
How did we make the transition from using wood to using coal, from using coal to using oil, from using oil to using natural gas? How in God’s name did we make that transition without a Federal Energy Agency? Milton Friedman
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.
When a man spends his own money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about how much he spends and how he spends it. When a man spends his own money to buy something for someone else, he is still very careful about how much he spends, but somewhat less what he spends it on. When a man spends someone else’s money to buy something for himself, he is very careful about what he buys, but doesn’t care at all how much he spends. And when a man spends someone else’s money on someone else, he doesn’t care how much he spends or what he spends it on. And that’s government for you. Milton Friedman
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstance and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.
Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. Milton Friedman
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.
The key insight of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. Milton Friedman
I’m in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my values, 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.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand. Milton Friedman
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power we must have a dispersion of power. Milton Friedman
Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
The only reason there is a crisis about Social Security in the US and pensions in Europe and Japan is that you cannot maintain a Ponzi scheme indefinitely. We have collected from today’s young to pay today’s old and counted on tomorrow’s young to keep doing so. That was a fine scheme as long as the number of young people was rising faster than old people. When that ratio comes to an end, such a system also has to end. Milton Friedman
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist. Milton Friedman
