Quotes by Milton Friedman

"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?"

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

"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."

"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."

"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."

"There's no such thing as a free lunch."

"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."