People Quotes by Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

— Milton Friedman

Society doesn't have values. People have values.

— Milton Friedman

The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

— Milton Friedman

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition…

— Milton Friedman

People who intend only to serve public interest are led by invisible hand to private interest which was no part of their…

— Milton Friedman

How can thinking people believe that a government that cannot deliver the mail can deliver gas better than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf,…

— Milton Friedman

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

— Milton Friedman

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work.…

— Milton Friedman

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

— Milton Friedman

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

— Milton Friedman

On aging societies, there is no reason why a country that has a lot of old people can't be prosperous if, during…

— Milton Friedman

If instead of looking at income, you look at levels of consumption, if anything that's become more equal. The fraction of families…

— Milton Friedman

The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people…

— Milton Friedman

People who intend only to seek their own benefit are “led by an invisible hand to serve a public interest which was…

— Milton Friedman

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the…

— Milton Friedman

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither…

— Milton Friedman

I have long been a critic of Social Security, basically because I believe that it is not the business of government to…

— Milton Friedman

You can travel from one end of the industrialized world to the other and almost the only people you will find engaging…

— Milton Friedman

If we have system in which government is in a position to give large favor - it's human nature to try to…

— Milton Friedman

Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is…

— Milton Friedman

The important issue is not how much inequality there is but how much opportunity there is for individuals to get out of…

— Milton Friedman

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to…

— Milton Friedman

If you have free immigration, in the way we had it before 1914, everybody benefited. The people who were here benefited. The…

— Milton Friedman

What happened was that for every $100 of money, by which I mean the cash that people keep in their pockets, and…

— Milton Friedman

A free society releases the energies and abilities of people to pursue their own objectives. It prevents some people from arbitrarily suppressing…

— Milton Friedman

It is most attractive about the US to people and countries with wealth is that it can provide security, insurance really, against…

— Milton Friedman

What would the people who sold us goods do with the money? They'd get dollars. What would they do with the dollars?…

— 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…

— Milton Friedman

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very…

— Milton Friedman

The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different…

— Milton Friedman

The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market.…

— Milton Friedman

The long-range sloution to high unemployment is to increase the incentive for ordinary people to save, invest, work, and employ others. We…

— Milton Friedman

I think in some ways it would make more sense to have as a poverty level a relative concept and say, the…

— Milton Friedman

As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by…

— Milton Friedman

It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve…

— Milton Friedman

Why is it that private insurance companies are not in trouble because people are getting older? Aren't they subject to the same…

— Milton Friedman

My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there…

— Milton Friedman

I believe the role that people like myself have played in the transformation of public opinion has been by persistently presenting a…

— Milton Friedman

The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare…

— Milton Friedman

One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions, rather than their results. We all know a…

— Milton Friedman