Milton Friedman Quotes

"I strongly urge the voters of Colorado to reject Referendum C, or any action that would suspend Colorado's Taxpayers Bill of Rights. I strongly favor the continued and uninterrupted use of TABOR, including it's so called ratchet mechanism. The ratchet is one of the best features of TABOR. It is the only thing that will reduce out-of-control government spending."

"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."

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

"We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork."

"I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible."

"Inflation is taxation without legislation."

"If, for example, existing government intervention is minor, we shall attach a smaller weight to the negative effect of additional government intervention. This is an important reason why many earlier liberals, like Henry Simons, writing at a time when government was small by today's standards, were willing to have government undertake activities that today's liberals would not accept now that government has become so overgrown."

"The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience"

"Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students ... not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes."

"Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it."

"Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence."

"The power to do good is also the power to do harm."

"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

"Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government."

"The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit."

"[Minimum Wage. In] Free to Choose, ... . . . the minimum wage law to be one of the most, if not the most anti-black law on the statute books."