A free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. — Milton Friedman

There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. — Pierre Dos Utt

Every person shall be free to do good ‘ at his own expense. — Milton Friedman

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state. — Milton Friedman

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

The argument for collectivism is simple; free market is not. — Milton Friedman

When you argue for free markets, you are arguing against the trend. — Milton Friedman

With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves. — Milton Friedman

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

Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it’s only in the general interest and in no one’s special interest. — Milton Friedman

The only reason free markets have a ghost of a chance is that they are so much more efficient than any other form of organization. — Milton Friedman

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

The argument for the free market is a complicated and sophisticated one and depends on demonstration of secondary effects. I have confidence market efficiency will win out. — Milton Friedman

If China don’t free up the political side, its economic growth will come to an end–while it is still at a very low level. — Milton Friedman

In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment. — Milton Friedman

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. — Milton Friedman

The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom. — Milton Friedman

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

We had much freer trade in the 19th century. We have much less globalization now than we did then. — Milton Friedman

The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system. — Milton Friedman

I believe that the monetary stability is an absolutely critical element in the satisfactory operation of a system. — Milton Friedman

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure. — Milton Friedman

We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork. — 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 do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal. — Milton Friedman

There’s no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn’t exist. — Milton Friedman

In a bureaucratic system, useless work drives out useful work. — Milton Friedman

The growing role that the government has played in financing and administering schooling has led not only the enormous waste of taxpayers money but also to a far poorer educational system. — Milton Friedman

The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend. — Milton Friedman

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. — Milton Friedman

Governments never learn. Only people learn. — Milton Friedman

What kind of society isn’t structured on greed? — Milton Friedman

Society doesn’t have values. People have values. — Milton Friedman

A society based on the freedom to choose is better than a society based on the principles of socialism, communism and coercion. — Milton Friedman

A society thAt puts equAlity… AheAd of freedom will end up with neither equAlity nor freedom. — Milton Friedman

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

And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us? — Milton Friedman

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

Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice & private initiative––the building blocks of success throughout our society. — 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 their working lives, individuals provide for their retirement. — Milton Friedman

The power to do good is also the power to do harm. — Milton Friedman

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power–we must have a dispersion of power. — Milton Friedman

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. — Milton Friedman

The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. — Milton Friedman

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

The government doesn’t have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others. — Milton Friedman

Even though the men who wield this power initially be of goodwill and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp. — Milton Friedman

The free market is not only a more efficient decision maker than even the wisest central planning body, but even more important, the free market keeps economic power widely dispersed. — Milton Friedman

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

The stock market and economy are two different things. — Milton Friedman

The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market. — Milton Friedman

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative. — Milton Friedman

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above. — Milton Friedman

It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non–market aspects of society. — Milton Friedman

The Internet moves us closer to ‘perfect information’ on markets. Individuals and companies alike can buy and sell across borders and jurisdictions wherever they find the best match of supply and demand. — Milton Friedman

Is it really true that political self–interest is nobler somehow than economic self–interest? — Milton Friedman

Is it really true that political self–interest is nobler somehow than economic self–interest? . . . And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us. — Milton Friedman

My interest in political philosophy was rather casual until I met Hayek. — Milton Friedman

When government–in pursuit of good intentions–tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost comes in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. — Milton Friedman

The central banks cannot control interest rates. That’s a mistake. They can control a particular rate, such as the Federal Funds rate, if they want to, but they can’t control interest rates. — Milton Friedman

When they so–called ‘target the interest rate’, what they’re doing is controlling the money supply via the interest rate. The interest rate is only an intermediary instrument. — Milton Friedman

If freedom were not so economically efficient it certainly wouldn’t stand a chance. — Milton Friedman

Economic freedom is … an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. — Milton Friedman

Humility is the distinguishing virtue of the believer in freedom; arrogance, of the paternalist. — Milton Friedman

Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. — Milton Friedman

If you do not force political freedom, economic freedom will be stymied sooner or later. — Milton Friedman

How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect? Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. — Milton Friedman

Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. — Milton Friedman

History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. — Milton Friedman

The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both — Milton Friedman

The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others. — Milton Friedman

If freedom led to wider inequality, I would prefer that to a world in which I got artificial equality at the expense of freedom. My objective, my god… is freedom of individuals to pursue their own values. — Milton Friedman

We have a freer world because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changes in China. Those two have been the main contributors to freedom in our time. — Milton Friedman

The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights. — Milton Friedman

Personal freedom has grown greatly within China, and that will provoke ever more points of conflict between the individual and state. — Milton Friedman

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

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

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That’s literally true. — Milton Friedman

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. — Milton Friedman