Quote #29

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the 'rule of the game' and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on.

More from Milton Friedman

  1. Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in …
  2. A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it ... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group think…
  3. Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has …
  4. With respect to teachers' salaries .... Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be…
  5. The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.
  6. Governments never learn. Only people learn.
  7. The true test of any scholar's work is not what his contemporaries say, but what happens to his work in the next 25 or 50 years. And the th…
  8. Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

All Milton Friedman quotes