Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny, servitude, and misery.
MILTON FRIEDMANThere’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
More Milton Friedman Quotes
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Every person shall be free to do good at his own expense.
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One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
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There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
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I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it’s possible.
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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.
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The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
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The real tragedy of minimum wage laws is that they are supported by well-meaning groups who want to reduce poverty. But the people who are hurt most by higher minimums are the most poverty stricken.
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If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.
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The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn’t do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn’t do a thing for them.
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Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
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With respect to teachers’ salaries …. Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.
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There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
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You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.
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A minimum-wage law is, in reality, a law that makes it illegal for an employer to hire a person with limited skills.
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Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
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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.
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Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
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Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
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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.
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Governments never learn. Only people learn.
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The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
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Nobody spends somebody else’s money as carefully as he spends his own.
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I am a libertarian with a small “l” and a Republican with a capital “R”. And I am a Republican with a capital “R” on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
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There’s no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was by far the greatest. Because he had real principles and he stuck by them. He made clear what he was going to do, and he did it. He didn’t back down.
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The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
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I am a libertarian with a small “l” and a Republican with a capital “R”. And I am a Republican with a capital “R” on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
MILTON FRIEDMAN