“You cannot simultaneously have a welfare state and free immigration.” — Milton Friedman

“The shoddy products are all produced by government or government-regulated industries. The outstanding products are all produced by private enterprise with little or no government involvement.” — Milton Friedman

“Everybody wants to cut down on government, provided that those things he has an interest in are maintained.” — 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

“It is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman on how real reform happens: “You can’t reform any institution from inside because people don’t act against their own interest.” “The only way you reform institutions is by competition from the outside.”

“The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman: “Tell me, is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed?” “The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way.” “The only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade.”

“How can thinking people believe that a government that cannot deliver the mail can deliver gas better than Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf, and the rest?” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman on how ‘social justice’ destroys a society: “If I have a philosophy that everything belongs to society—if something happens to me, that’s not my fault, that’s because society did it to me—then the whole concept of property loses its role.” “Why shouldn’t I steal? Why shouldn’t I destroy property? After all, it’s nobody’s. It belongs to everybody, so it belongs to nobody.” “Moreover, if I happened to be in a lower-income group, or a deprived social group, or a discriminated-against racial group, that’s the malevolence of other people. It’s not my fault, and I have every right to get back at them.”

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” — Milton Friedman

“Keynes, in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, set forth a hypothesis which was a beautiful one, and it really altered the shape of economics. But it turned out that it was a wrong hypothesis.” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman: “Everywhere and at all times, economic progress has meant far more to the poor than to the rich.” “Wherever progress has been achieved, it has relieved the poor from back-breaking toil. It has also enabled them to enjoy the comforts and conveniences that had always been available to the rich.”

“Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.” — Milton Friedman

“We have been moving away from the fundamental principles that made this a great country—the principles of freedom, of relying on the individual, of keeping government in its place.” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman: “Over and over again, you’ll find that the reaction is: ‘What we’ve done in the past has not worked, but that’s because we haven’t done it right. We ought to spend more money on it.’” “I can understand that attitude in the 1930s when we had not sufficiently absorbed the experience of other countries. But it’s much harder to understand it in the 1970s when we now have 40 years of experience behind us.”

“Economic freedom is an essential requisite for political freedom. By enabling people to cooperate with one another without coercion or central direction, it reduces the area over which political power is exercised.” — Milton Friedman

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” — Milton Friedman

“Wherever government bureaucracy takes over, costs go up and quality goes down.” — Milton Friedman

Milton Friedman: “I am not a conservative. I’ve never been a conservative. Hayek was not a conservative.” “We are liberals in the true meaning of that term: concerned with freedom. We are not liberals in the current distorted sense—those liberal with other people’s money.”

“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.” — Milton Friedman