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You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.

Milton Friedman

Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters’ own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Dream Money Politics Technique Vote
The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Achievement Civilization Government Greatness
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Doubt Greatness Himself Mindset Myself Principle Reality
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Determination Difference Oppression Poor Respect Teaching
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Argument Belief Freedom Liberty
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Company Money Profit Responsibility
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Freedom Important Place Profit
If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Employment Pay People Yourself
Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Money Save
If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Rule Talk Understand Yourself
Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Freedom Greatness Mindset Ourselves Plant
There’s nothing that does so much harm as good intentions.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Goodness Harm Intention Liberty
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Liberty Politics Society
The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Force Liberty People Rule Society
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Food Freedom
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

Fundamental Principle Simplicity Understand Writing
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Care Freedom Yourself
The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ‘ that there is no alternative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Destruction Liberty Necessary
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Noble Politics Profit True
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Market Oneself Role
Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Change Politics Reality
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Employment Goodness Job People
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Learning People Philosophy Rule
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

Equality Freedom Rule Society
The word ‘free’ is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with ‘freedom.’ The word ‘fair’ is not used in either of our founding documents.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Difference Freedom Independence Word
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

Freedom Government Liberty Myself Principle
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

Government Oneself Profit

You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.

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You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.

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