Milton Friedman Quotes

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.

Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.

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

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.

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.

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

The essential notion of a capitalist society … is voluntary cooperation, voluntary exchange. The essential notion of a socialist society is force.

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

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.

The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.