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Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Milton Friedman

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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drugs Illegal Kill Myself People Right Support
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
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
When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union – like public housing in the United States – look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Direction Government Improvement Philosophy
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

Employment Law Limitation Money Person Reality Skill
Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Change Politics Reality
The government doesn’t have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Genrosity Government Money Power
The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can’t do that.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Freedom Government Greatness Hate Religious
There’s no such thing as a free lunch.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Food Freedom
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
With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Enemy Freedom Man Rival
When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

People Poor Start Wind Yourself
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Learning People Philosophy Rule
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Funny Government Politics Rule Yourself
You know there are very few Marxists left in the world they’re all in American universities.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Education World Yourself
Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Price
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Liberty Politics Society
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Greatness Judgement Mistake Oneself Politics Result
You cannot be sure that you are right unless you understand the arguments against your views better than your opponents do.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Argument Opponents Right Understand View Yourself
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
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 cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Care Freedom Yourself
You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Difference Freedom Yourself
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

Exercise Freedom Liberty People Politics Power
The power to do good is also the power to do harm.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Choice Goodness Harm Power
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

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

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Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

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