552 Quotes by Milton Friedman

Asking economists for investment advice is like asking a physicist to fix a broken toilet. Not their field, though sort of related.

There is one and only one social responsibility of business–to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

The preservation of liberty, not the promotion of efficiency, is the primary justification for private property. Efficiency is a happy, though not accidental, by-product – and a most important by-product because liberty could not have survived if it had not also produced affluence.

Believers in aristocracy and socialism share a faith in centralized rule, in rule by command rather than by voluntary cooperation.

If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven’t cut taxes enough.

A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor’s exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital’s exploited. It’s worse than Marx. It’s Marx stood on its head.

So far as we know, no pollster has asked the public, “Are you getting your money’s worth for the more than 40 percent of your income being spent on your behalf by government?” But.

Japan has introduced fiscal stimulus five times in the past seven or eight years and each time it’s been a failure and that’s not a surprise. Fiscal stimulus is not stimulating in and of itself.

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them.