552 Quotes by Milton Friedman

When you have a time of crisis what happens depends on what ideas are floating around, and what ideas have been developed, and thought through, and are made effective.

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.

I think there is universal agreement within the economics profession that the decline - the sharp decline in the quantity of money played a very major role in producing the Great Depression.

What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them to shape it to their own will. The market gives people what the people want instead of what other people think they ought to want. At the bottom of many criticisms of the market economy is really lack of belief in freedom itself.

It all would have been much better if individuals saved for their own old age.

It is true that a competitive market is not the whole of society. A great deal depends on the qualities of the population and the nation in how they organize the non-market aspects of society.

Americans know very little about social statistics, but I am not sure that it's important that Americans know about social statistics.

Why is it that private insurance companies are not in trouble because people are getting older? Aren't they subject to the same demographics? The difference is that they've accumulated a fund, not a pay-in, pay-out system.

The central banks cannot control interest rates. That's a mistake. They can control a particular rate, such as the Federal Funds rate, if they want to, but they can't control interest rates.