Famous Quotes & Sayings

Milton Friedman

Most of the energy of political work is devoted to correcting the effects of mismanagement of government.

Milton Friedman

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem.

Milton Friedman

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

Milton Friedman

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Milton Friedman

If you spend your own money on yourself, you care how much you spend and how well you spend it. If you spend your own money on someone else, you care how much you spend, but you don't care how well it is spent. If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you don't care how much you spend, but you do care how well it is spent. And finally, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you don't care how much you spend, and you don't care how well it is spent. That is government.

Milton Friedman

I'm not in favor of no government. You do need a government. But by doing so many things that the government has no business doing, it cannot do those things which it alone can do well. There's no other institution in my opinion that can provide us with protection of our life and liberty. However, the government performs that basic function poorly today, precisely because it is devoting too much of its efforts and spending too much of our income on things which are harmful. So I have no doubt that that's the major single problem we face.

Milton Friedman

The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the nineteenth 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

The government doesn't have any money. The only power it has is to take from some and give to others.

Milton Friedman

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rule of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

Milton Friedman

There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves

Milton Friedman

If the US government spends 40 percent of the nation's income, as it does through either borrowing or taxes, that income is not available for people to spend. The deficit is an indirect method of taxation. Of course, politicians prefer to borrow instead of tax because then someone down the road has to deal with the consequences.

Milton Friedman

Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.

Milton Friedman

I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government. And that's close to 40 percent of our national income.

Milton Friedman

The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.

Milton Friedman

The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.

Milton Friedman

You could not possibly maintain the current level of government taxation without the taxes being hidden, and they are hidden in two very different ways. They are hidden through withholding, but they are also hidden by being imposed on business, supposedly on business, when really, of course, business can't pay taxes, only people can pay taxes.

Milton Friedman

Higher taxes never reduce the deficit. Governments spend whatever they take in and then whatever they can get away with.

Milton Friedman

There are severe limits to the good that the government can do for the economy, but there are almost no limits to the harm it can do.

Milton Friedman

The Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy or a result of the failure of the market system as was widely interpreted. It was instead a consequence of a very serious government failure, in particular a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do.

Milton Friedman

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 plan.

Milton Friedman

I would say that in this world, the greatest source of inequality has been special privileges granted by government.

Milton Friedman

The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.

Milton Friedman

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

Mike DeWine

In my opinion, Chief Justice Roberts put it best during his recent confirmation hearings. And he said, and I quote, "The framers were not the sort of people, having fought a revolution to get the right of self-government to sit down and say, 'Well, let's take all the difficult issues before us and let's have the judges decide them.' That would have been the farthest thing from their mind," however, I fear that the Supreme Court forgets this advice.

Nathan Deal

In his 4 years in the White House, President Carter worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.

Muqtada al Sadr

If the government fails to listen to your demands, then you will decide what is best for you.

Muqtada al Sadr

I don't want the chair of the government because it will be controlled by the U.S. and I don't want to be controlled by the U.S.

Keith O'Brien

Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown has given the Government's support to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. It is difficult to imagine a single piece of legislation which, more comprehensively, attacks the sanctity and dignity of human life than this particular Bill.

Nathan Myhrvold

The reason societies with democratic governments are better places to live in than their alternatives isn't because of some goodness intrinsic to democracy, but because its hopeless inefficiency helps blunt the basic potential for evil.

Mitt Romney

Americans acknowledge that liberty is a gift of God, not an indulgence of government.

Mitt Romney

Our nation is too different, too diverse to say that what works in Massachusetts is somehow going to be grabbed by the federal government, usurping the power of states and imposing a one-size-fits-all plan on the nation. That will not work.

Mitt Romney

The right way to reign in healthcare costs is not by applying more government and more controls and making it more like the post office, it's by making it more like a consumer-driven market.

Mitt Romney

With these 11 million people here illegally, let's have them registered, know who they are, those that are her paying taxes and not taking government benefits should begin a process towards application for citizenship.