black
grey
blue
red
brown
white

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.

Milton Friedman

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
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
Governments never learn. Only people learn.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Learning People Philosophy Rule
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power – we must have a dispersion of power.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Avoid Power Problem Rule World
Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Believe Government Live Way
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
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
The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Bad Government Liberty Problem
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Liberty Politics Society
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
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.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Hurt Law People Reality Support Tragedy
If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Law Rule Talk Understand Yourself
Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Devotion Energy Government Management Politics
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
You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Care Freedom Yourself
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 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
Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Noble Politics Profit True
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
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Civilization Government Greatness Science
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
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
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
Anything that government can do, private enterprise can do for half the cost.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Government Price
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
Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Business Government Rule
There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist.
MILTON FRIEDMAN

Existence Government Ideal Rule

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

If you pay people not to work and tax them when they do, don’t be surprised if you get unemployment.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Milton Friedman Quotes