Milton Friedman

"The difference between a bad economist and a good one is that the bad economist confines himself to the visible effects while the good economist takes into account both visible and invisible effects."

"There is enormous scope for voluntary charitable activity without government coercion."

"We keep saying the answer to a problem is more education. But education for what?"

"Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom."

"The business of businessmen should be business, not determining how other people should spend their money."

"Prohibitions are easier to institute than to abolish."

"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."

"There's no such thing as a free lunch, but there are plenty of people willing to tell you why you should pay for someone else's."

"Concentrated power is the most dangerous thing in a free society."

"The role of competitive markets is to constrain our right to discriminate by making discrimination expensive."

"We have been fortunate to live in an era of government expansion, but governments don't last forever."

"The most effective check on the abuse of government power is to limit that power in the first place."

"What we call unemployment is a feature of our system, not a bug."

"The basic problem is how to combine three things: economic efficiency, political freedom, and social justice."

"You cannot be sure that your success is due to your merit and not to luck, privilege, or other unearned advantages."

"Fiscal responsibility is essential if we want to preserve economic freedom for future generations."

"The worst thing you can do to an idea is to make it a policy of the government."

"Rent control appears to be in almost universal disfavor among economists. I cannot find a single reputable study suggesting that rent control has succeeded."

"The belief that government officials are the only ones capable of running complex enterprises is both arrogant and wrong."

"History shows that the growth of government has been accompanied by a decline in personal liberty."

"Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It means wanting the best for yourself and your family in the long run."

"The question is not whether government should act, but how and to what extent."

"We need to distinguish between the role of government in enforcing contracts and in creating them."

"The most important measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members, but not through force."

"Education is becoming a form of credential inflation rather than skill development."

"The pursuit of equality of outcome destroys liberty."

"Markets are constantly adapting to changes in consumer preferences in ways that government can never do."

"When you make something illegal, you don't eliminate the demand for it; you create a criminal enterprise."

"The most reliable way to corrupt a young person is to teach them to esteem those who think alike rather than those who think clearly."

"Money has become the language of prices, allowing strangers to cooperate without understanding or trusting each other."