119 quotes
For the people who administer it, it instills in them a feeling of almost Godlike power. For the people who are supposedly benefiting it instills a feeling of childlike dependence.
The old saw is that the Quakers went to the New World to do good and ended up doing well. Today, well-meaning reformers go to Washington to do good and end up doing harm.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
In this day and age, we need to revise the old saying to read, "Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned."
Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation.
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.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
I am in favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.
[A] society which is socialist cannot also be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom.
The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power - we must have a dispersion of power.
To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the Central Bankers.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
I am convinced that the minimum-wage law is the most anti-Negro law on our statute books—in its effect, not its intent.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
The need for government in these respects arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
Society doesn't have values. People have values.
Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
Free to Choose (1980)
It's nice to elect the right people, but that isn't the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.
About changing congress (1977)
I have no right to coerce someone else, because I cannot be sure that I'm right and he is wrong.
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
Make politics an avocation, not a vocation.
Will we read next that government control of prices has created a shortage of sand in the Sahara?