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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

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Devotion Energy Government Management Politics
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
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
The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Company Money Profit Responsibility
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Learning People Philosophy Rule
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
There is one and only one responsibility of business: to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Design Game Oneself Responsibility Rule
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
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Government Protection See True War
There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Existence Government Ideal Rule
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Creation Harm Intention Liberty Power
In the 1960s, The National Education Association changed its character. The NEA changed into a union. And from that point on you can see deterioration in the quality of schooling in the United States.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Change Character Education Quality Unity
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
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 must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Difference Freedom Yourself
Society doesn’t have values. People have values.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

People Society Value
The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Destruction Hands Politics Power
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
Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Believe Government Live Way
Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government People Philosophy Problem Protection
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Drug Market Oneself Role
A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Country Freedom Himself Patriot
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’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 growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Education Government Money Play Poor Role Waste
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
Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Price

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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