Quote

You mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.

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
Mustn
Performance
Judge
Performances
Judging
Politician
Talk

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
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.
Milton Friedman
Image
The one thing that’s missing, but that will soon be developed, is a reliable e-cash, a method whereby on the Internet you can transfer funds from A to B, without A knowing B or B knowing A.
Milton Friedman
Image
I am a limited-government libertarian.
Milton Friedman
Image
It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.
Milton Friedman
Image
If instead of looking at income, you look at levels of consumption, if anything that's become more equal. The fraction of families that have a dishwasher, that have a sewing machine, that have a television set. In respect to consumption, it's very hard to avoid the view that people have been getting more equal rather than more unequal.
Milton Friedman
Image
What works for Sweden wouldn't work for France or Germany or Italy. In a small state, you can reach outside for many of your activities. In a homogeneous culture, they are willing to pay higher taxes in order to achieve commonly held goals. But common goals are much harder to come by in larger, more heterogeneous populations.
Milton Friedman
Image
Germany has a very able and productive workforce. It has high-quality products that are valued all over the world. It has every opportunity to be a productive, growing state. It just has to give its entrepreneurs a chance. It has to let them make money, hire and fire, and act like entrepreneurs.
Milton Friedman
Image
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
Milton Friedman
Image
The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.
Milton Friedman
Image
What kind of society isn't structured on greed?
Milton Friedman
Image
Germany cannot get out of the euro. What it has to do, therefore, is make the economy more flexible - to eliminate the restrictions on prices, on wages and on employment in short, the regulations that keep 10 percent of the German workforce unemployed.
Milton Friedman
Image
[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
Milton Friedman
Image
To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.
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
Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace.
Milton Friedman
Image
In the current world, with the skills needed, dropouts [like no secondary education] are condemned to being members of the underclass. In my view, this is a fault of the American school system, which is a government monopoly.
Milton Friedman
Image
My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used.
Milton Friedman
Image
The broader and more influential organisations of businessmen have acted to undermine the basic foundation of the free market system they purport to represent and defend.
Milton Friedman
Image
Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton Friedman
Image
How did we make the transition from using wood to using coal, from using coal to using oil, from using oil to using natural gas? How in God's name did we make that transition without a Federal Energy Agency?
Milton Friedman