Quote

The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus.

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
Great
Bureaus
Achievements
Achievement
Civilization
Government
Come

More quotes by Milton Friedman

Image
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Milton Friedman
Image
If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.
Milton Friedman
Image
What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.
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
You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder.
Milton Friedman
Image
When everybody owns something, nobody owns it, and nobody has a direct interest in maintaining or improving its condition. That is why buildings in the Soviet Union - like public housing in the United States - look decrepit within a year or two of their construction.
Milton Friedman
Image
I know of no severe depression, in any country or any time, that was not accompanied by a sharp decline in the stock of money, and equally of no sharp decline in the stock of money that was not accompanied by a severe depression.
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
The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good.
Milton Friedman
Image
The evidence of history speaks with a single voice. I do not know any exception to the proposition that if you compare like with like, the freer the system, the better off the ordinary poor people have been.
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
Image
The current oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of governmental mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war.
Milton Friedman
Image
A private enterprise system needs some measuring rod, it needs something, it needs money to make its transactions. You can't run a big complicated system through barter, through converting one commodity into another. You need a monetary system to operate. And the instability in that monetary system is devastating to the performance of the economy.
Milton Friedman
Image
I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
Milton Friedman
Image
The central banks cannot control interest rates. That's a mistake. They can control a particular rate, such as the Federal Funds rate, if they want to, but they can't control interest rates.
Milton Friedman
Image
How do you hold down government spending?
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 mustn't judge a politician by talk. You have to judge them by performance.
Milton Friedman
Image
Whenever you try to do good with someone else's money, you are committed to using force. How can you do good with somebody else's money, unless you first take it away from them? The only way you can take it away from them is the threat of force: you have a policeman, tax collector, who comes and takes it from them.
Milton Friedman
Image
China's productive system draws upon the other East Asian countries to a great extent. The volume of trade is much larger than the net amount being exported from China. China needs substantial reserves to finance all that.
Milton Friedman