Quotes by 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.

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

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

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?

The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.

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

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

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

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

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