Friedman Quotes & Sayings

The events we have passed through form a coherent pattern and the political actors who have shaped the world are rational
if not necessarily moral or decent
actors. Americans tend to think of its leaders as fools and knaves and of its enemies as psychotic. This seems to comfort us. While America's leaders might be knaves, they are not fools, and while our enemies might have utterly different moral values that are repugnant to us, they are far from insane. — George Friedman

I thought the line 'I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska' was very funny. I think the word is 'sarcasm.' In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. — Andrea Fay Friedman

Young people are the key to this election. — Kinky Friedman

EASY PHILOSOPHY
by
Peter Cole Friedman

as soon as you get pubes

you'll start reading Marx

then ideally some Plato

some Descartes or Kant

which sound like aperitifs

then you'll talk

to other people who read

this stuff

you'll talk about life

and other big subjects

but mostly about this stuff

and you'll recognize the names

of the scholars in the field

and you'll start citing things

they've said about the stuff

and they will alight as they do

on your dandelion brain

like fat birds and one day you will

bend and bend so much

that you'll almost forget the world

has a sun which feeds you

even with your mouth closed — Peter Cole Friedman

A real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development. — Milton Friedman

The Tyr had tried. It had really tried. It must have gone over every element of human psychology, tried desperately to understand the nature of human aesthetic sense ... and then failed, miserably, in every regard. — C.S. Friedman

Every sport needs its temple, its cathedral. — Thomas Friedman

The evidence is overwhelming that Planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. Most are not. It's clear from the Opinion Polls and my own experience, that indeed most people accept the notion that SOME UFOs are alien spacecraft. The greater the education, the MORE likely to accept this proposition — Stanton T. Friedman

Complete free trade is not politically feasible. Why? Because it's only in the general interest and in no one's special interest. — Milton Friedman

Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government
in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. — Milton Friedman

In other words, he explained, unless we bear witness to God's presence by our own good deeds, He is not present. — Thomas L. Friedman

The only way [the book can be written] is to set the unbook-the gilt-framed portrait of the book-right there on the altar and sacrifice it, truly sacrifice it. Only then may the book, the real live flawed finite book, slowly, sentence by carnal sentence, appear. — Bonnie Friedman

I fought for years and spent a fortune fighting and never got anywhere. — David Friedman

Of course all such conclusions about appropriate actions against the rich and powerful are based on a fundamental flaw: This is us, and that is them. This crucial principle, deeply embedded in Western culture, suffices to undermine even the most precise analogy and the most impeccable reasoning. — Noam Chomsky

The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits. — Milton Friedman

We're going to make that Lone Star shine again — Kinky Friedman

I can see a day soon where you'll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world - some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh - paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. — Thomas Friedman

Many jobs at Google require math, computing, and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more. — Thomas Friedman

...Promises are more dangerous then secrets. — Aimee Friedman

My major problem with the world is a problem of scarcity in the midst of plenty ... of people starving while there are unused resources ... people having skills which are not being used. — Milton Friedman

Analysis predating [Milton] Friedman's gave a different answer to question of the Fed's policy errors [during the Great Depression] and new scholarship is validating the old wisdom. It now appears that Friedman will be merely an interlude between the sounder analysis of economists contemporary to the Great Depression and those who have rediscovered their insights. --Jeff Herbener — David Howden

But Friedman seemed to share Friedrich Hayek's extreme and inaccurate view that socialism of the sort that Britain embraced under the old Labour Party was incompatible with democracy, and I don't think that there is a good theoretical or empirical basis for that view. The Road to Serfdom flunks the test of accuracy of prediction! — Richard Posner

Parents aren't supposed to cry. Or get scared. Or lie. Right? I thought I knew all the rules. But there are no rules. — Aimee Friedman

I was heavily influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, C. S. Friedman, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, R. A. Salvatore, and James Clavell to name a few, but of course every book I've ever read, whether I liked it or not, has had an influence ... I think I am constantly evolving as a writer, but not to mimic anyone else or mainstream trends. — Peter V. Brett

Some people are not capable of giving you what you're trying to get from them. — Sonia Friedman

I'm trying to have everything that I put into the world be something that makes a difference in the way I want to make a difference. — David Friedman

Whether your destination is heaven or hell, you always have to change planes in Dallas. — Kinky Friedman

The present oil crisis has not been produced by the oil companies. It is a result of government mismanagement exacerbated by the Mideast war. — 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

The euro is good for Europe. But only if there is flexibility all around. — Milton Friedman

Babson became a sought-after public speaker, and the newspapers reported his predictions as newsworthy events. — Walter Friedman

The only reason there is a crisis about Social Security in the US and pensions in Europe and Japan is that you cannot maintain a "Ponzi" scheme indefinitely. We have collected from today's young to pay today's old and counted on tomorrow's young to keep doing so. That was a fine scheme as long as the number of young people was rising faster than old people. When that ratio comes to an end, such a system also has to end. — Milton Friedman

My career keeps shifting; I keep doing the next thing and it keeps growing. — David Friedman

President Obama gave voice to exactly this sentiment in the speech he delivered as the first American president to visit Hiroshima, on May 27, 2016: "Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines," said Obama. "The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well." Our — Thomas L. Friedman

I firmly believe that the next great breakthrough in bioscience could come from a 15-year-old who downloads the human genome in Egypt. — Thomas Friedman

On June 20, 2016, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which tracks forced displacement worldwide based on data from governments, partner agencies, and UNHCR's own reporting, issued a report stating that a total of 65.3 million people were displaced at the end of 2015, compared with 59.5 million just twelve months earlier. — Thomas L. Friedman

There is no figure who had more of an influence, no person had more of an influence on the intellectuals behind the Iron Curtain than Friedrich Hayek. His books were translated and published by the underground and black market editions, read widely, and undoubtedly influenced the climate of opinion that ultimately brought about the collapse of the Soviet Union. — Milton Friedman

I want to tell her that promises are as dangerous as secrets, but by then she's floating out the door. I hear her light footsteps on the stairs, and then the front door slams. — Aimee Friedman

Significant changes in the growth rate of money supply, even small ones, impact the financial markets first. Then, they impact changes in the real economy, usually in six to nine months, but in a range of three to 18 months. Usually in about two years in the US, they correlate with changes in the rate of inflation or deflation."
"The leads are long and variable, though the more inflation a society has experienced, history shows, the shorter the time lead will be between a change in money supply growth and the subsequent change in inflation. — Milton Friedman

The only relevant test of the validity of a hypothesis is comparison of prediction with experience. — Milton Friedman

In which of these respects the public is more stubborn is an empirical question to be judged from the factual evidence, not something that can be determined by reason alone. — Milton Friedman

You never can cure poverty. Poverty is in the eye of the beholder. — Milton Friedman

I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. — Thomas Friedman

China has seen a great deal of economic progress. It's certainly rather of a miracle. The growing role of the market in the economy will force China to open up its political system over time and to move toward a more democratic society. So taken as a whole, the one real failure in this whole business has been Russia. — Milton Friedman

What would the people who sold us goods do with the money? They'd get dollars. What would they do with the dollars? Eat them?! — Milton Friedman

Fundamentally, there are only two ways of co-ordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary co-operation of individuals - the technique of the market place. — Milton Friedman

Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs. — John Kenneth Galbraith

On the whole I prefer cats to women because cats seldom if ever use the word 'relationship'. — Kinky Friedman

No matter where you go, you always see yourself in the rearview mirror. — Kinky Friedman

If you spend your own money on yourself, you care how much you spend and how well you spend it. If you spend your own money on someone else, you care how much you spend, but you don't care how well it is spent. If you spend someone else's money on yourself, you don't care how much you spend, but you do care how well it is spent. And finally, if you spend someone else's money on someone else, you don't care how much you spend, and you don't care how well it is spent. That is government. — Milton Friedman

At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right - or should I say entitlement? They raised such a big political fuss that Congress legislated nontaxable status for employer-provided medical care. — Milton Friedman

In the music industry, we value large success. I realized that while I would like that, that it's not what my writing is about. And if I start making it about that, it becomes impure. — David Friedman

With so many generous friends and family members from so many places for so many years, how could I not still be an optimist? Thomas — Thomas L. Friedman

There's nothing like living a little close to the edge that gets you motivated to ensure that you get the credentials you need to succeed. — Thomas Friedman

The good teachers are bailing out. Education is very important ... This should be the centerpiece on the table of Texas. — Kinky Friedman

This plea comes from the bottom of my heart. Every friend of freedom, and I know you are one, 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. A country in which shooting down unidentified planes "on suspicion" can be seriously considered as a drug-war tactic is not the kind of United States that either you or I want to hand on to future generations. — Milton Friedman

There is no good way of measuring poverty. — Milton Friedman

Your processes are amazingly fast, yet flexible, and the people at Screaming Circuits, from finance to the factory floor, are all knowledgeable and a joy to work with. — Jonathan Friedman

Only government can take perfectly good paper, cover it with perfectly good ink and make the combination worthless. — Milton Friedman

We expect to make about 500,000-600,000 more. Our initial goal was one million, but in reality we will probably make a bit less. — Eric Friedman

When there were financial difficulties they still managed to provide us with music and art lessons. — Jerome Isaac Friedman

Whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions. — Milton Friedman

Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. ...
And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold. — Milton Friedman

Fiction must convince our bodies for it to have any chance of convincing our minds. — Bonnie Friedman

It's almost like that's the definition of being American: You love becoming Irish for a day, or becoming Italian ... Or becoming a Negro for four years. — Josh Alan Friedman

We're not going to make Evolution or any of our other products depend on Mono anytime in the near future. — Nat Friedman

Anger does not make history. Power does. And power may be supplemented by anger, but it derives from more fundamental realities; geography, demographics, technology, and culture. — George Friedman

It is taken for granted that workers should receive their pay partly in kind, in the form of medical care provided by the employer. How come? Why single out medical care? Surely food is no less essential to life than medical care. Why is it not at least as logical for workers to be required to buy their food at the company store as to be required to buy their medical care at the company store? — Milton Friedman

Let me tell you the tale of a poet who hanged himself with promises ... — C.S. Friedman

Economists agree about economics - and that's a science - and they disagree about economic policy because that's a value judgment ... I've had profound disagreements on policy with the famous Milton Friedman. But, on economics, we agree. — Franco Modigliani

The Ten Commandments being taken out of the public schools. I want them back. — Kinky Friedman

The system is not perfect. Until it's perfect, let's do away with the death penalty. — Kinky Friedman

If you put the government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand. - Milton Friedman — Vikram Mansharamani

Since the rise of Islam, Jews had lived as a tolerated minority, or dhimmi, a status granted to Jews and Christians because they were monotheists. Despite a growing tendency in our own times to paint the premodern Islamic world as an Eden of religious tolerance in which Jews flourished, they always lived by the whims of fickle rulers and the mood of a hostile majority. In the eyes of that majority they were effete, lacking in honor, and powerless by definition, but as long as they accepted the supremacy of Muslims they were usually allowed to live and observe their faith and occasionally to prosper. — Matti Friedman

Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger. — Thomas Friedman

In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears-and that is our problem. — Thomas L. Friedman

Meaningful relationships are two-way, and that means constantly looking for ways to improve your customers' lives. — Peter Friedman

When you drill down and see the forces that are shaping nations, you can see that the menu from which they choose is limited. — George Friedman

It's all very well going around thinking you're a cowboy, until you run into somebody who thinks he's an Indian. — Kinky Friedman

The important thing when it comes to grooming, as when it comes to clothes, is you do not want anything to distract from the strength and power of your ideas,. — Vanessa Friedman

There is no other complex field in our society in which do-it-yourself beats out factory production or market production. Nobody makes his or her own car. But it is still the case that parents can perform the job of educating their children [homeschooling], in many cases better than our present education system. — Milton Friedman

I, along with our fourteen soldiers, set off into the urban wilderness of Baghdad. We had six humvees, lots of ammunition, over a million dollars worth of equipment, and no idea what the fuck we were going to do with it all. — Brandon Friedman

Robots can now milk cows. Oil prices have fallen globally, meaning both the petro-states and those indirectly propped up by them are weakened. At the same time, slower growth in China has lately shrunk its voracious appetite for African, Australian, and Latin American commodities. China accounted for more than a third of global growth in recent years, and its growth engine multiplied the growth of many of the countries that exported raw materials to Beijing. That has slowed. China's total debt has grown from roughly 150 percent of its GDP in 2007 to around 240 percent today - a massive increase in one decade that is dampening its growth and its imports and shrinking China's wallet for foreign aid and investment in African and Latin American commodity-exporting countries. In — Thomas L. Friedman

I guess I'm half traditionalist, half modern girl and I just never ... I love the digital world and I love electronica and after I shoot everything is digital, but I just ... I don't know. — Carol Friedman

When I heard the book (Thomas Friedman's latest) was actually coming out, I started to worry. Among other things, I knew I would be asked to write the review. The usual ratio of Friedman criticism is 2:1, i.e., two human words to make sense of each single word of Friedmanese. Friedman is such a genius of literary incompetence that even his most innocent passages invite feature-length essays. — Matt Taibbi

Our finest writing will certainly come from what is unregenerate in ourselves. It will come from the part that is obdurate, unbanishable, immune to education, springing up like grass. — Bonnie Friedman

In 2011, the NASSCOM team introduced me to Aloke Bajpai, who, like others on his young team, cut his teeth working for Western technology companies but returned to India on a bet that he could start something - he just didn't know what. The result was Ixigo, a travel search service that can run on the cheapest cell phones and helps Indians book the lowest-cost fares, whether it is a farmer who wants to go by bus or train for a few rupees from Chennai to Bangalore or a millionaire who wants to go by plane to Paris. Ixigo is today the biggest travel search platform in India, with millions of users. To build it, Bajpai leveraged the supernova, using free open-source software, Skype, and cloud-based office tools such as Google Apps and social media marketing on Facebook. They "enabled us to grow so much faster with no money," he told me. It — Thomas L. Friedman

My monetary studies have led me to the conclusion that central banks could profitably be replaced by computers. Fortunately, for me personally, that conclusion has had no practical impact, else there would have been no Central Bank of Sweden to have established the award [Nobel Prize] I am honored to receive. — Milton Friedman

The stock market and economy are two different things. — Milton Friedman

No arbitrary obstacles should prevent people from achieving those positions for which their talents fit them and which their values lead them to seek. Not birth, nationality, color, religion, sex, nor any other irrelevant characteristic should determine the opportunities that are open to a person - only his abilities. — Milton Friedman

When Israelis were indirectly involved in the massacre of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut in 1982, the story was front-page news for weeks. When Lebanese Shiites were directly involved in killing Palestinians in the very same camps from 1985 to 1988, it was almost always back-page news - if it was reported at all. This — Thomas L. Friedman

Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen. — George Friedman

I've been in true love many times. I just try to avoid it as much as possible. For if there's one thing I know about true love, it is that sooner or later, it results in a hostage situation. — Kinky Friedman

The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny. — Milton Friedman

Who Protects the Consumer? "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chuses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens." - Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, vol. I, [>] — Milton Friedman

The fall of the Berlin Wall did more for the progress of freedom than all of the books written by myself or Friedrich Hayek or others. — Milton Friedman

...being a weatherman in Ireland is about the biggest scam going. — Rachel Friedman

In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment. — Milton Friedman

The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit. — Milton Friedman

The state of our educational system is a disgrace to our country. We have an elementary and secondary school system in which close to half of the youngsters never graduate properly. It's a disgrace that there is more illiteracy today than there was 100 years ago. — Milton Friedman