Top 100 Friedman Quotes
#1. Regaring Politics: You've got your cats on one side and your dogs on the other; someone has to walk the fence and feed the animals. - Kinky Friedman
Ray Palla
#2. 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
#3. What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues.
Thomas Friedman
#4. I have a musical called Goodbye and Good Luck, based on a Grace Paley short story. I also have King Island Christmas, and there are 20 different productions of it this year.
David Friedman
#5. So long as large sums of money are involved - and they are bound to be if drugs are illegal - it is literally impossible to stop the traffic, or even to make a serious reduction in its scope.
Milton Friedman
#6. I support gay marriage. I believe they have a right to be as miserable as the rest of us.
Kinky Friedman
#7. I think that the Internet is going to be one of the major forces for reducing the role of government.
Milton Friedman
#8. When you lose your job, the unemployment rate isn't four percent, it's 100 percent.
Thomas Friedman
#10. The pursuit of universal rights requires more than speeches. It requires power.
George Friedman
#11. I think in some ways it would make more sense to have as a poverty level a relative concept and say, the level of poverty is that level of income or that level of consumption below which 10 percent of the people now are.
Milton Friedman
#13. Maybe this is what travel gives you - or gives you back, in most cases - that childlike sense of wonder, and with it a kidstyle openness where you want to finger-paint with anyone and everyone who shows
Rachel Friedman
#14. Plot joined the expedition unwooed, as a necessary companion. It was not the scout. The scout was a certain mood. I followed that mood, and let the shape of the story flow from that.
Bonnie Friedman
#16. If you really want to engage in policy activity, don't make that your vocation. Make it your avocation. Get a job. Get a secure base of income. Otherwise, you're going to get corrupted and destroyed.
Milton Friedman
#17. I even went so far as to become a Southern Baptist for a while, until I realized that they didn't hold 'em under long enough.
Kinky Friedman
#18. The facts never speak for themselves. They have to be interpreted in terms of some understanding of where they come from and what the relation between them is.
Milton Friedman
#19. The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.
Thomas Friedman
#20. 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.
Milton Friedman
#21. The Golden Straitjacket is the defining political-economic garment of globalization. [ ... ] The tighter you wear it, the more gold it produces.
Thomas Friedman
#22. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them.
Edwin H. Friedman
#24. Mrs. Friedman lived in a happy snow globe of AP History.
Harlan Coben
#25. [U]nemployment is ... a side effect of the cure for inflation.
Milton Friedman
#26. All data leaves a trail. The search for data leaves a trail. The erasure of data leaves a trail. The absence of data, under the right circumstances, can leave the clearest trail of all.
C.S. Friedman
#27. The best thing about liver is how virtuous it makes you feel after you've eaten some.
Bruce Jay Friedman
#28. When there were financial difficulties they still managed to provide us with music and art lessons.
Jerome Isaac Friedman
#29. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states.
Milton Friedman
#30. Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations.
Milton Friedman
#31. I've achieved many of my dreams, and I want to see that some others get a chance to, especially younger Texans.
Kinky Friedman
#32. 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
#33. The Federal Reserve the privately owned U.S. central bank definitely caused The Great Depression by contracting the amount of currency in circulation by one third from 1929 to 1933.
Milton Friedman
#34. The Internet moves us closer to "perfect information" on markets. Individuals and companies alike can buy and sell across borders and jurisdictions wherever they find the best match of supply and demand.
Milton Friedman
#35. It is interesting to note that Copernicus was German/Polish, Luther was German, and Gutenberg was German.
George Friedman
#36. If you're lookin' for a helpin' hand, try the one at the end of your arm.
Kinky Friedman
#38. 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
#39. 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
#41. When the economy was going up, [Milton Friedman and I] both gave the same advice, and when the economy was going down, we gave the same advice. But in between he didn't change his advice at all.
Paul Samuelson
#42. 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
#43. Seventeen publishers rejected the manuscript, at which time we knew we had something pretty hot.
Kinky Friedman
#44. I don't have to work extra hard, but that's because there are a lot of women in my professional network and I have hired a lot of women as full-time writers and part-time columnists.
Ann Friedman
#45. Composition is definitely what I'm born to do, and it came last.
David Friedman
#46. The only corporate social responsibility a company has is to maximize its profits.
Milton Friedman
#47. I believe that Willy Nelson is the hillbilly Dalai Lama.
Kinky Friedman
#48. Socialism, in the traditional sense, meant government ownership and operation of the means of production. Outside of North Korea and a couple of other spots, no one in the world today would define socialism that way. That will never come back.
Milton Friedman
#49. Tomorrow could not get better if one failed to survive today.
C.S. Friedman
#50. The case against a fully independent central bank is strong indeed.
Milton Friedman
#51. 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
#52. The nineteenth-century liberal regarded an extension of freedom as the most effective way to promote welfare and equality; the twentieth-century liberal regards welfare and equality as either prerequisites of or alternatives to freedom.
Milton Friedman
#54. My career keeps shifting; I keep doing the next thing and it keeps growing.
David Friedman
#55. It all would have been much better if individuals saved for their own old age.
Milton Friedman
#56. French voters are trying to preserve a 35-hour work week in a world where Indian engineers are ready to work a 35-hour day. Good luck.
Thomas L. Friedman
#57. Every person shall be free to do good ' at his own expense.
Milton Friedman
#58. Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs.
Jonah Goldberg
#59. The only engine big enough to impact Mother Nature is Father Greed.
Thomas Friedman
#60. The Soviet experience was much worse than experts in the West had thought. That discovery had a tremendous impact both on the intellectual community and on the public at large.
Milton Friedman
#61. I think my most favorite subject was Lena Horne because she embodies soul and grace and elegance and street. She embodies everything and beauty, great beauty, so she was a favorite subject.
Carol Friedman
#62. Rapid increases in the quantity of money produce inflation. Sharp decreases produce depression.
Milton Friedman
#63. I just want Texas to be number one in something other than executions, toll roads and property taxes.
Kinky Friedman
#64. My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill.
Thomas Friedman
#65. You've got to find what you love and let it kill you. I don't think any of us should ever forget that.
Kinky Friedman
#66. The more Israel sinks into the West Bank, the more it is delegitimized and isolated, the more the world focuses on Israel's colonialism rather than Iran's nuclear enrichment, the more people call for a single democratic state in all of historic Palestine.
Thomas Friedman
#67. We should remember what Bismarck said in 1888: "If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans." Balkan
George Friedman
#68. If you elect me the first Jewish justice of the peace, I'll reduce the speed limits to 54.95!
Kinky Friedman
#69. The most efficient way to use military power is to disrupt emerging powers before they can become even marginally threatening.
George Friedman
#70. It requires a public awakening, establishment of political will, resetting of priorities, sacrifice for the future, and an alliance of governments, businesses, and citizens.
Thomas L. Friedman
#71. 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.
Milton Friedman
#72. Capitalism makes people unequally rich. Communism makes people equally poor.
Thomas Friedman
#73. So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible? And my answer to that is, no they do not.
Milton Friedman
#74. In response to a suggestion that total free trade would end in cheaper foreign products flooding the market and causing unemployment.
Milton Friedman
#75. If you cannot state a proposition clearly and unambiguously, you do not understand it.
Milton Friedman
#76. Every golf course should have its carbon rating on the scorecard, alongside its Course Rating, Slope, par and yardage.
Thomas Friedman
#77. Geopolitics is all about leverage. We cannot make ourselves safer abroad unless we change our behavior at home.
Thomas Friedman
#78. You must distinguish sharply between being pro free enterprise and being pro business.
Milton Friedman
#79. If freedom led to wider inequality, I would prefer that to a world in which I got artificial equality at the expense of freedom. My objective, my god ... is freedom of individuals to pursue their own values.
Milton Friedman
#80. Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to promote law and order?
Milton Friedman
#81. I had never thought of haiku, or any kind of poetry for that matter, as a social activity.
Abigail Friedman
#82. In 1990, Howard Friedman and Leslie Martin, two psychologists at the University of California, Riverside, embarked on a research project within a research project, seeking answers to the question, 'What makes for a long life?'
Katie Hafner
#83. We need to become energy independent or at least aspire to that.
Thomas Friedman
#85. There seems little correlation between poverty and honesty. One would rather expect the opposite; dishonesty may not always pay but surely it sometimes does
Milton Friedman
#86. Entrepreneurs don't write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they're always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.
Thomas Friedman
#87. This is called "spiritual lifting." It's not heavy lifting. The governor of Texas should not be confused with Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's a powerful position. The governor of Texas can't do any heavy lifting really. It's not that powerful a position.
Kinky Friedman
#88. Our emotions can be either corrupted or elevated. Human love was not created to be without premeditated purpose.
Manis Friedman
#89. Whether your destination is heaven or hell, you always have to change planes in Dallas.
Kinky Friedman
#90. As I very much liked to draw and paint as a child, I entered a special art program in high school, which was very much like being in an art school imbedded in a regular high school curriculum.
Jerome Isaac Friedman
#91. One of the great joys in life is having ones hair brushed.
Lise Friedman
#92. Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards. Wherever I go I meet innovators of wind power equipment, solar energy operators.
Thomas Friedman
#93. It is depressing but not shocking to witness the liberal intelligentsia embrace Ari Shavit so enthusiastically. Shavit is someone who is as consistently wrong as Thomas Friedman on major issues, and at least as much a courtier of power.
Max Blumenthal
#94. The combination of economic and political power in the same hands is a sure recipe for tyranny.
Milton Friedman
#95. You'll know the green revolution has been won when the word 'green' disappears.
Thomas Friedman
#96. If you don't have an ethic of conservation, you basically have a license to drive a Hummer through the Amazon.
Thomas Friedman
#97. The world runs on individuals pursuing their self interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn't construct his theory under order from a, from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn't revolutionize the automobile industry that way.
Milton Friedman
#98. American young people have got to understand from an early age that the world pays off on results, not on effort. Not everyone should win a prize no matter where he or she finishes.
Thomas Friedman
#99. The ideal country in a flat world is the one with no natural resources, because countries with no natural resources tend to dig inside themselves. They try to tap the energy, entrepreneurship, creativity, and intelligence of their own people-men and women-rather than drill an oil well.
Thomas L. Friedman
#100. The major way that society has come to agree on the rules of property is through the growth of common law, though more recently legislation has played an increasing role.
Milton Friedman
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