A quotes list created by Lee Sonogan
Defining the free markets against the monopoly machine, Milton Friedman was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1976. Also an advocate for the reduction in the size of governments, he was a self-described capitalised that was one of the good ones supporting freedom. A statistician you can get behind, his work on consumption analysis, monetary history and the complexity of stabilization policy spawned many contributions to social science theory alike.
- The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience.
- When government – in pursuit of good intentions – tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.
- If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
- The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
- And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? You think a Hitler rewards virtue? You think, excuse me, if you’ll pardon me, American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Share this Quote
- The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- Nothing is as permanent as a temporary government program.
- 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.
- Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
- One man’s opportunism is another man’s statesmanship.
- Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
- Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it… gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
- 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 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.
- Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
His applied macroeconomics to floating exchange rates makes you question what mainstream money can be positive or negative. In the consumption smoothing of rational expectations, his work has influenced so many responses regarding inflation and the difference between privatization.
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