119 quotes
I think the government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem and very often makes the problem worse.
An Economist's Protest (1975)
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
A military draft is undesirable and unnecessary. We can and should man our armed forces with volunteers—as the United States has traditionally done except in major wars.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
Exchange is truly voluntary only when nearly equivalent alternatives exist. Monopoly implies the absence of alternatives and thereby inhibits effective freedom of exchange.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
There was nothing in these views to repel a student; or to make Keynes attractive. Keynes had nothing to offer those of us who had sat at the feet of Simons, Mints, Knight, and Viner.
The only way that has ever been discovered to have a lot of people cooperate together voluntarily is through the free market. And that’s why it’s so essential to preserving individual freedom.
You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
Wherever the free market has been permitted to operate, wherever anything approaching equality of opportunity has existed, the ordinary man has been able to attain levels of living never dreamed of before.
Free to Choose (1980)
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programmes by their intentions rather than their results.
The use of quantity of money as a target has not been a success. I'm not sure that I would as of today push it as hard as I once did.
There's a smokestack on the back of every government program.
We have heard much these past few years of how the government protects the consumer. A far more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
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.
A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it … gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
Capitalism and Freedom (1962)
If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.
The key need in policy-setting is to reverse the growth of government!
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
I am a libertarian with a small "l" and a Republican with a capital "R". And I am a Republican with a capital "R" on grounds of expediency, not on principle.
In a free society, a government has no business using the power of the law or the taxpayer's money to propagandize for some views and to prevent the transmission of others.
An Economist's Protest: Columns in Political Economy (1966)
In a free society, it is hard for “good” people to do “good,” but that is a small price to pay for making it hard for “evil” people to do “evil,” especially since one man's good is anther's evil.
A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits (1970)