Milton Friedman

Well first of all, tell me, is there some society you know of that doesn't run on greed? You think Russia doesn't run on greed? You think China doesn't run on greed? What is greed?

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.

The power to do good is also the power to do harm.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes.

The black market was a way of getting around government controls. It was a way of enabling the free market to work. It was a way of opening up, enabling people.

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

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.

The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.

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

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Governments never learn. Only people learn.

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless.

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

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

Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.