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Famous Quotes about Liberty
 
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Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
-- Milton Friedman		 
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.
-- Milton Friedman		 
[U]nemployment is ... a side effect of the cure for inflation.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Well first of all, 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? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. 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. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. 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 the free-enterprise system.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
-- Milton Friedman		 
I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there’s something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.
-- Milton Friedman		 
A society that puts equality...ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
-- Milton Friedman		 
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?
-- Milton Friedman		 
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.
-- Milton Friedman		 
To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.
-- Milton Friedman		 
I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. According to my value system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so. Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself ... Economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom.
-- Milton Friedman		 
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. It 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.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy. ... Roosevelt's policies were very destructive. Roosevelt's policies made the depression longer and worse than it otherwise would have been.
-- Milton Friedman		 
It's a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don't approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users. Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The most unresolved problem of the day is precisely the problem that concerned the founders of this nation: how to limit the scope and power of government. Tyranny, restrictions on human freedom, come primarily from governmental restrictions that we ourselves have set up.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and also the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?
-- Milton Friedman		 
[T]he burden of government is not measured by how much it taxes, but by how much it spends.
-- Milton Friedman		 
One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
-- Milton Friedman		 
[Trade licensing] almost inevitably becomes a tool in the hands of a special producer group to maintain a monopoly position at the expense of the rest of the public. There is no way to avoid this result.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interest.
-- Milton Friedman		 
If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.
-- Milton Friedman		 
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
-- Milton Friedman		 
[Drug use] does harm a great many other people, but primarily because it's prohibited. There are an enormous number of innocent victims now. You've got the people whose purses are stolen, who are bashed over the head by people trying to get enough money for their next fix. You've got the people killed in the random drug wars. You've got the corruption of the legal establishment. You've got the innocent victims who are taxpayers who have to pay for more and more prisons, and more and more prisoners, and more and more police. You've got the rest of us who don't get decent law enforcement because all the law enforcement officials are busy trying to do the impossible. And, last, but not least, you've got the people of Colombia and Peru and so on. What business do we have destroying and leading to the killing of thousands of people in Colombia because we cannot enforce our own laws? If we could enforce our laws against drugs, there would be no market for these drugs.
-- Milton Friedman		 
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.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The Fed was largely responsible for converting what might have been a garden-variety recession, although perhaps a fairly severe one, into a major catastrophe. Instead of using its powers to offset the depression, it presided over a decline in the quantity of money by one-third from 1929 to 1933 ... Far from the depression being a failure of the free-enterprise system, it was a tragic failure of government.
-- Milton Friedman		 
I think that prohibition of drugs is the most immoral program that the United States has ever engaged in. It's destroyed civil rights at home and it is responsible for thousands of deaths abroad.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights…This implies a belief in the equality of man in one sense; in their inequality in another.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Inflation is taxation without representation.
-- Milton Friedman		 
With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority.
-- Milton Friedman		 
I am myself persuaded, on the basis of extensive study of the historical evidence, that... the severity of each of the contractions - 1920-21, 1929-33, and 1937-38 - is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities and would not have occurred under earlier monetary and banking arrangements.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The unions might be good for the people who are in the unions but it doesn't do a thing for the people who are unemployed. Because the union keeps down the number of jobs, it doesn't do a thing for them.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
-- Milton Friedman		 
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.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Government power must be dispersed. If government is to exercise power, better in the county than in the state, better in the state than in Washington. If I do not like what my local community does, be it in sewage disposal, or zoning, or schools, I can move to another local community, and though few may take this step, the mere possibility acts as a check. If I do not like what Washington imposes, I have few alternatives in this world of jealous nations.
-- Milton Friedman		 
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.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The power to determine the quantity of money... is too important, too pervasive, to be exercised by a few people, however public-spirited, if there is any feasible alternative. There is no need for such arbitrary power... Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes - excusable or not - can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic - this is the key political argument against an independent central bank.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Central bankers always try to avoid their last big mistake. So every time there's the threat of a contraction in the economy, they'll over stimulate the economy, by printing too much money. The result will be a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one.
-- Milton Friedman		 
A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
-- Milton Friedman		 
Spending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.
-- Milton Friedman		 
The history of totalitarian regimes is reflected in the evolution and perfection of the instruments of terror and more especially the police.
-- Carl J. Friedrich		 
O, only a free soul will never grow old! [Ger., O, nur eine freie Seele wird nicht alt.]
-- Jean Paul Friedrich Richter		 
No mighty king, no ambitious emperor, no pope, or prophet ever dreamt of such an awesome pulpit, so potent a magic wand [television].
-- Fred W. Friendly		 
Some want prayer in school, some want condoms. Printing prayers on condoms satisfies nobody.
-- Marshall Fritz		 
The Left/Right scale is a misleading way of comparing political systems. It doesn't measure anything.
-- Marshall Fritz		 
In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise. The core is religious intolerance. The sides simply change between the Atheists, Catholics, Protestants, Unitarians, etc., depending whether you are talking about the Soviet Union, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, America, etc. A common second reason is to prepare the boys to go to war and the girls to cheer them on.
-- Marshall Fritz		 
The Left/Right scale is a misleading way of comparing political systems. It doesn't measure anything.
-- Marshall Fritz		 
Charter schools are just public schools on a slightly longer leash. A dog on a long leash is still a dog on a leash.
-- Marshall Fritz		 
The danger of the past was that men became slaves. The danger of the future is that man may become robots.
-- Erich Fromm		 
If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it.
-- Erich Fromm		 
If faith cannot be reconciled with rational thinking, it has to be eliminated as an anachronistic remnant of earlier stages of culture and replaced by science dealing with facts and theories which are intelligible and can be validated.
-- Erich Fromm		 
The member of a primitive clan might express his identity in the formula “I am we”; he cannot yet conceive of himself as an “individual,” existing apart from his group.
-- Erich Fromm		 
Vote Labor, and you build castles in the air. Vote Conservative, and you can live in them.
-- David Frost		 
Most of the change we think we see in life Is due to truths being in and out of favor.
-- Robert Frost		 
Freedom lies in being bold.
-- Robert Frost		 
A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
-- Robert Frost		 
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
-- Robert Frost		 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
-- Robert Frost		 
A civilized society is one which tolerates eccentricity to the point of doubtful sanity.
-- Robert Frost		 
To deny freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
-- James Anthony Froude		 
English character and English freedom depend comparatively little on the form which the Constitution assumes at Westminster. A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to manage its own affairs and think its own thoughts.
-- James Anthony Froude		 
Why be thrifty when your old age and health care are provided for, no matter how profligate you act in your youth? Why be prudent when the state insures your bank deposits, replaces your flooded-out house, buys all the wheat you can grow? ... Why be diligent when half of your earnings are taken from you and given to the idle?
-- David Frum		 
It’s amazing: some 1.5 million able-bodied people are now enjoying free housing, free meals, television, libraries, educational services, and gymnasiums, all without working and all at the expense of the American taxpayer. All they had to do to qualify for this deal: kill, rob, or rape somebody.
-- David Frum		 
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith, like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
-- J. William Fulbright		 
We must dare to think “unthinkable” thoughts… We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent… Because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
-- J. William Fulbright		 
When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.
-- J. William Fulbright		 
The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.
-- J. William Fulbright		 
To expose a 4.2 Trillion dollar ripoff of the American people by the stockholders of the 1000 largest corporations over the last one-hundred years will be a tall order of business.
-- Buckminster Fuller		 
Great nations are simply the operating fronts of behind-the-scenes, vastly ambitious individuals who had become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.
-- Buckminster Fuller		 


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