Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Milton Friedman
Age: 94 †
Born: 1912
Born: July 31
Died: 2006
Died: November 16
Economist
Essayist
Statistician
University Teacher
Writer
Brooklyn
New York
Milton Fridman
Create
Establish
Freedom
Delicate
Keep
Rare
Government
Destroy
Plant
Protect
Plans
Becoming
Frankenstein

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.
Milton Friedman
Image
Now that I'm 60, every morning I look in the mirror and say, I don't know who you are, stranger, but I'm gonna shave you anyway.
Milton Friedman
Image
Political leaders in capitalist countries who cheer the collapse of socialism in other countries continue to favor socialist solutions in their own. They know the words, but they have not learned the tune.
Milton Friedman
Image
And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.
Milton Friedman
Image
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
Image
What does it mean to say that government might have a responsibility? Government can't have a responsibility any more than the business can. The only entities which can have responsibilities are people.
Milton Friedman
Image
Economic freedom is ... an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
Milton Friedman
Image
If a country is an attractive place for foreigners to invest their funds, then that country will have a relatively high exchange rate. If it's an unattractive place, it will have a relatively low exchange rate. Those are the fundamentals that determine the exchange rate in a floating exchange rate system.
Milton Friedman
Image
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 bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
Milton Friedman
Image
The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents.
Milton Friedman
Image
No central banker would disagree with the proposition that inflation is primarily a monetary phenomenon. Not one of them will disagree that every inflation has been accompanied by a rapid increase in the quantity of money and every deflation by a decline in the quantity of money.
Milton Friedman
Image
Saying it is one thing. Doing it is very different.
Milton Friedman
Image
World trade depends on differences among countries, not similarities. Different countries are in different stages of development. It is appropriate for them to have different patterns, different policies for ecology, labor standards, and so forth.
Milton Friedman
Image
The great virtue of a free market is that it enables people who hate each other, or who are from vastly different religious or ethnic backgrounds, to cooperate economically. Government intervention can't do that.
Milton Friedman
Image
I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression.
Milton Friedman
Image
The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.
Milton Friedman
Image
I do not believe there is a natural resource economics. I believe there is good economics and bad economics.
Milton Friedman
Image
You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.
Milton Friedman