Milton Friedman
Champion of free markets and monetary policy
Most quoted
"The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another."
— from Speech, 1979
"The long-range solution [to high unemployment] is to increase the incentive for ordinary people to save, invest, work, and employ others. We make it costly for employers to employ people, and we subsidize people not to go to work. We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork."
— from Book, 1980
"The government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government tries to do more than this, it creates problems."
— from Interview/Speech
All quotes by Milton Friedman (290)
We economists don't know very much.
The invisible hand is smarter than the invisible foot.
Spending by government is a transfer from those who work for a living to those who vote for a living.
Human wants and desires are unlimited, but resources are limited.
The rate of change in prices is a monetary phenomenon.
Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. On a worldwide basis, that has been the case through most of human history.
The way to learn about economic freedom is to learn about the history of economic freedom.
I am favor of abolishing the income tax in favor of a consumption tax.
The monetary authority controls the stock of money; that's all.
Economics is the science of choice under scarcity.
The greatest threat to freedom is the concentration of power anywhere.
Life is a learning process, and you have to try and learn from people who have had a different experience.
The key to economic freedom is the ability to own property and to engage in voluntary exchange.
I got my Nobel Prize the year before, and I said in my Nobel lecture that I didn't deserve it, but I was very pleased to have it.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.
The only way that a society can be truly free is if its economy is also free.
The great virtue of a free market is that it permits an extraordinary diversity of individual tastes and preferences to be satisfied.
The business of business is business.
The most important single central fact about the relation between the government and the economy is the enormous expansion in the role of government.
Contemporaries of Milton Friedman
Other Economicss born within 50 years of Milton Friedman (1912–2006).