Economics Quotes by Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom

— Milton Friedman

The stock market and economy are two different things.

— Milton Friedman

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

— Milton Friedman

You know there are very few Marxists left in the world... they're all in American universities.

— Milton Friedman

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

— Milton Friedman

[U]nemployment is ... a side effect of the cure for inflation.

— Milton Friedman

When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people.

— Milton Friedman

Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.

— Milton Friedman

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices…

— Milton Friedman

“Given greater freedom about where to send their children, parents of a kind would flock together and so prevent a healthy intermingling…

— Milton Friedman

Positive economics is in principle independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgment...In short, positive economics is or can be an…

— Milton Friedman

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

— Milton Friedman

Cutting government spending and government intrusion in the economy will almost surely involve immediate gain for the many, short-term pain for the…

— Milton Friedman

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page,…

— Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition.

— Milton Friedman

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is…

— Milton Friedman

The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest.…

— Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. History suggests that capitalism…

— Milton Friedman

For one thing, there are many "inventions" that are not patentable. The "inventor" of the supermarket, for example, conferred great benefits on…

— Milton Friedman

When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why…

— Milton Friedman

Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses…

— Milton Friedman

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion…

— Milton Friedman

Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic…

— Milton Friedman

Central bankers always try to avoid their last big mistake. So every time there's the threat of a contraction in the economy,…

— Milton Friedman

“This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, must be as…

— Milton Friedman

Keynes was a great economist. In every discipline, progress comes from people who make hypotheses, most of which turn out to be…

— Milton Friedman

The great danger to the consumer is the monopoly -whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home…

— Milton Friedman

If capitalism worked as the socialists think an economic system ought to work, and provided a constant equality of living conditions for…

— Milton Friedman

All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come…

— Milton Friedman

Viewed as a means to the end of political freedom, economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or…

— Milton Friedman

The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic…

— Milton Friedman

“The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads…

— Milton Friedman

“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run…

— Milton Friedman

“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion—the…

— Milton Friedman

Everywhere, and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.

— Milton Friedman

A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against…

— Milton Friedman

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to…

— Milton Friedman

I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.

— Milton Friedman

Economics has become increasingly an arcane branch of mathematics rather than dealing with real economic problems.

— Milton Friedman

I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money…

— Milton Friedman