Friedman Quotes

What is a child?" he asks her.
The diamond gaze does not flinch. "Creatures that are sold on the street by their parents, to get the coin to make more children." She paused. "Adults sell themselves. ~ C.S. Friedman

Keynes vs Hayek? Friedman vs Krugman? Those are the wrong intellectual debates. Its you vs. Tony Hayward, BP CEO, You vs. Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs CEO. And you are losing ... ~ Barry Ritholtz

The great achievements of western capitalism have rebounded primarily to the benefit of the ordinary person. These achievements have made available to the masses conveniences and amenities that were previously the exclusive prerogative of the rich and powerful. ~ Milton Friedman

As the current U.S.-Israel assault raged, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman explained that Israel's tactics in the current attack, as in its invasion of Lebanon in 2006, are based on the sound principle of "trying to 'educate' Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population." That makes sense on pragmatic grounds, as it did in Lebanon, where "the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians - the families and employers of the militants - to restrain Hezbollah in the future."10 And by similar logic, bin Laden's effort to "educate" Americans on 9/11 was highly praiseworthy, as were the Nazi attacks on Lidice and Oradour, Putin's destruction of Grozny, and other notable educational exercises. ~ Noam Chomsky

Make peace with your past so you don't mess up the present! ~ Marcia Casar Friedman

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

Several technological and political forces have converged, and that has produced a global, Web-enabled playing field that allows for multiple forms of collaboration without regard to geography or distance - or soon, even language. ~ Thomas 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

Politicians will always spend every penny of tax raised and whatever else they can get away with. ~ Milton Friedman

It is ironic that Keynesianism originated as a weapon to combat depression, but became universally accepted and "successful" only during (and because of!) the postwar expansion. At the first sign of renewed world recession, Keynesian theory has proved itself to be a snare and a delusion that has gone into immediate bankruptcy. The resulting "post-Keynesian synthesis" is also the theoretical reason for the reactionary exhumation of the simplistic, neoclassical, and monetarist economic theory of the 1920s. This revival of old theory is highlighted by the award of Nobel prizes in economics to Friedrich von Hayek, whose theoretical work was done before the Great Depression, and Milton Friedman, whose lone voice echoed in the wilderness until the new world economic crisis put his unpopular and antipopulist theories on the agenda of business board rooms and government cabinet rooms in one capitalist country after another. The real reason for the recent interest in fifty-year-old theories is that capital now wants them to legitimize its attack on the welfare state and "unproductive" expenditures on social services, which capital claims to need for "productive" investment in industry, including armaments. ~ Andre Gunder Frank

But on the other hand, if you come under circumstances where each person is entitled to a pro-rata share of the pot, to take an extreme example, or even to a low level of the pie, than the effect of that situation is that free immigration, would mean a reduction of everybody to the same, uniform level. Of course, I'm exaggerating, it wouldn't go quite that far, but it would go in that direction. And it is that perception, that leads people to adopt what at first seems like inconsistent values. ~ Milton Friedman

It doesn't worry me a bit that China and Japan hold so much US debt. In a way, it seems foolish for them to do it because they get lower returns than they might elsewhere. But that is their business. ~ Milton Friedman

Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? ... And just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us. ~ Milton Friedman

The government has no more right to tell me what goes into my mouth, including illegal drugs, than it has to tell me what comes out of my mouth. ~ Milton Friedman

If you have the choice between humble and cocky, go with cocky. There's always time to be humble later, once you've been proven horrendously, irrevocably wrong. ~ Kinky Friedman

All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another. ~ Milton Friedman

I imagine the people whose lives are most intertwined with mine, and I realize life has gone on without me. The planet has not imploded because I, the girl who has always done what is expected of her, decided not to, just this once. ~ Rachel Friedman

Josh [Friedman] and I have been friends for years, and he said, "Hey, if you ever want to do a TV show, I can take it over and run it," and I was like, "Yes!" He's always been so busy that I never dared to ask that, but it just worked out, time wise, that this was the season where we could probably do it, so I jumped at it. So, even though I'm busy with other stuff, I'm excited to be writing this. ~ John August

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

If almost everyone is in favor of feeding the hungry, the politician may find it in his interest to do so. But, under those circumstances, the politician is unnecessary: some kind soul will give the hungry man a meal anyway. If the great majority is against the hungry man, some kind soul among the minority still may feed him - the politician will not. ~ David D. Friedman

This is the potential start of something ... awareness ~ Vanessa Friedman

It is difficult to decide what you mean when you say any of these words and easy to claim that anyone else's meaning is (or is not) the right one. There is a built-in indeterminacy in our use of language that allows us to shift responsibility for actions in Paris away from a religion to a minor strand in a religion, or to the actions of only those who pulled the trigger. This is the universal problem of secularism, which eschews stereotyping. It leaves unclear who is to be held responsible for what. By devolving all responsibility on the individual, secularism tends to absolve nations and religions from responsibility. ~ George Friedman

When women act on behalf of our own sexual desires, we get blamed for being raped, for the demise of modern masculinity, for men's cheating, for getting cervical cancer, for street harassment, even for earthquakes. ~ Jaclyn Friedman

in October 2014, the United States was inundated with more than fifty thousand unaccompanied children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. "They're fleeing from threats and violence in their home countries," noted Vox.com, "where things have gotten so bad that many families believe that they have no choice but to send their children on the long, dangerous journey north." Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador are among the most environmentally degraded and deforested regions in Central America. They cut their forests; we got their kids. It ~ Thomas L. Friedman

These days, there are many people around the world who listen to the songs that made me infamous and read the books that made me respectable. ~ Kinky Friedman

... unfools of unbeing ... means quite clearly people who are too stereotyped to be eccentric – people who are too dead spiritually to exist at all and who call alive individual fools ~ Norman Friedman

People will change their habits quickly IF they have a strong reason for doing so. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Culture is nested in context, not genes. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

Companies that were paying attention understood they were witnessing the birth of the "self-directed consumer", because the internet and all the other tools for the flat world had created a means for every consumer to customize exactly the price, experience, and service he or she wanted. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

The widespread enthusiasm for reducing government taxes and other impositions is not matched by a comparable enthusiasm for eliminating government programs - except programs that benefit other people. The ~ Milton Friedman

There's no point in comparing an actual, operating system with an ideal system that doesn't exist. ~ Milton Friedman

Golf has an ambivalent relationship with the environment. On one hand, it's a great preserver of open spaces. Golf doesn't pave the world - it helps to green the world. But the downside is, it uses a lot of fertilizer, pesticides and water. ~ Thomas Friedman

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

The fall of the Berlin Wall really demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was a bad system, and what subsequently happened in the Soviet Union, that that system was a failure. ~ Milton Friedman

Of course, the speed at which any society embraces these strategies will always be a product of the interplay between politics, culture, and leadership. Culture shapes a society's political responses, and its leadership and politics, in turn, shape culture. What exactly is culture? I like this concise definition offered by BusinessDictionary.com: culture is the "pattern of responses discovered, developed, or invented during the group's history of handling problems which arise from interactions among its members, and between them and their environment. These responses are considered the correct way to perceive, feel, think, and act, and are passed on to the new members through immersion and teaching. Culture determines what is acceptable or unacceptable, important or unimportant, right or wrong, workable or unworkable." One ~ Thomas L. 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

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

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

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

The telephone is your theater, your stage. Your receiver is your curtain. When it goes up, make yourself a star. ~ Nancy J. Friedman

The story also pointed out that most big cities and towns have chambers of commerce and economic development offices, but what makes Itasca unique, participants say, is a commitment to hard data and McKinsey-style analysis, as well as a willingness to depart from the script that drives many private sector lobbies. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

If you want to solve a big problem, you need to go from taking credit, to sharing credit, to multiplying credit. The systems that all work, multiply credit. Multiplying credit is just another way of making everyone in the system feel ownership. And the byproduct is both resilience and propulsion. ~ Thomas L. 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

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

The most important thing about a TV set is to get it back against something and not out in the middle of a room where it's like a somber fellow making electronic judgments on you. ~ Bruce Jay Friedman

I say thank God for government waste. If government is doing bad things, it's only the waste that prevents the harm from being greater. ~ Milton Friedman

We don't have a desperate need to grow. We have a desperate desire to grow. ~ Milton Friedman

I watched the land for as long as I could, until it disappeared behind its shawl of mist, and until I had it fixed in my mind - unchanged, mysterious and beautiful ~ Aimee Friedman

When you argue for free markets, you are arguing against the trend. ~ Milton Friedman

Suburban sprawl has heavily damaged the balance of our cities, divorcing environmental context from design and removing the concept of scale from the creation of neighborhoods. ~ Avi Friedman

Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above. ~ Milton Friedman

I think of my songs as there to be something to move people emotionally. ~ David Friedman

The antidote to envy is one's own work. Always one's own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself. ~ Bonnie Friedman

A fourth argument, one that was made by Alexander Hamilton and continues to be repeated down to the present, is that free trade would be fine if all other countries practiced free trade but that so long as they do not, the United States cannot afford to. This argument has no validity whatsoever, either in principle or in practice. Other countries that impose restrictions on international trade do hurt us. But they also hurt themselves. Aside from the three cases just considered, if we impose restrictions in turn, we simply add to the harm to ourselves and also harm them as well. Competition in masochism and sadism is hardly a prescription for sensible international economic policy! Far from leading to a reduction in restrictions by other countries, this kind of retaliatory action simply leads to further restrictions. ~ Milton Friedman

It is my view that what is important is cutting government spending, however spending is financed. A so-called deficit is a disguised and hidden form of taxation. The real burden on the public is what government spends (and mandates others to spend). As I have said repeatedly, I would rather have government spend one trillion dollars with a deficit of a half a trillion than have government spend two trillion dollars with no deficit. ~ Milton Friedman

See the world and then come home and decide who you want to be in it, ~ Rachel Friedman

My plan is to bring back like the Bracero Program (search) from 1944 that ran for 20 years where the Mexican government vets these people. I mean, they pay for it, and they get green cards, and they're actually legitimate. And then seal the border. ~ Kinky Friedman

I'm not afraid to live. I'm not afraid to fail. I'm not afraid to succeed. I'm not afraid to fall in love. I'm not afraid to be alone. I'm just afraid I might have to stop talking about myself for five minutes. ~ Kinky Friedman

Look," she told me. "A good kreda is very hard to find. I invested a lot of time and memory in you. I had no intention of giving all that up, just because you were going to be in a bad mood for a decade or two. ~ C.S. Friedman

Reality ensures that the end of history will never come. ~ Milton Friedman

When my writing really started to take off was when I made a decision that I would write only what I wanted to write, and if 10 people wanted to hear it, that's fine. ~ David Friedman

The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant
that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them. ~ Paul Krugman

Well what are our geopolitical objectives? First, that North America be peaceful, prosperous, dominated by the United States. Second, that no nation be able to approach the United States militarily ... Those are the goals. It's very simple. We achieve that by making certain that all conflict takes place in the Eastern Hemisphere so we don't have conflict here. ~ George Friedman

I would say that in 2000, we understand as much about how today's system of globalization is going to work as we understood about how the Cold War system was going to work in 1946. ~ Thomas Friedman

I am hoping, though, that many of them have kids, who, when they have a moment to take a break from their iPods, Internet, or Google, will explain to their parents running the country just how the world is being flattened. ~ Thomas Friedman

Because 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. If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promises a certain minimal level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence, regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not. Then it really is an impossible thing. ~ Milton Friedman

Even as I pursued a doctorate in the history of ideas in my native Denmark, I realized I had neither the encyclopedic training nor the passion for cool logic - not to mention the nerve - to follow in the footsteps of classical liberal philosophers and economists such as Robert Nozick, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman. ~ Anne Fortier

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 11/9/89 unleashed forces that ultimately liberated all the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire ~ Thomas L. Friedman

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

Life is the messy bits. ~ Lise Friedman

Why did i so passionately require the truth? because all great fiction is true ~ Kinky Friedman

Islam invaded Europe twice from the Mediterranean - first in Iberia, the second time in southeastern Europe, as well as nibbling at Sicily and elsewhere. Christianity invaded Islam multiple times, the first time in the Crusades and in the battle to expel the Muslims from Iberia. Then it forced the Turks back from central Europe. The Christians finally crossed the Mediterranean in the 19th century, taking control of large parts of North Africa. Each of these two religions wanted to dominate the other. Each seemed close to its goal. Neither was successful. What remains true is that Islam and Christianity were obsessed with each other from the first encounter. Like Rome and Egypt they traded with each other and made war on each other. ~ George Friedman

Always respect your superiors, if you have any. ~ Kinky Friedman

Remember, I'm not running against Rick Perry; I'm running against apathy. ~ Kinky Friedman

Sleep came slower than a frigid woman. ~ Kinky Friedman

The Great Depression was not a sign of the failure of monetary policy or a result of the failure of the market system as was widely interpreted. It was instead a consequence of a very serious government failure, in particular a failure in the monetary authorities to do what they'd initially been set up to do. ~ Milton Friedman

Attitudes are the real figures of speech. ~ Edwin H. Friedman

Yesterday was the last day you said, 'I can't.' Today is the first day you say, 'I will. ~ Zack Friedman

Although these examples only scratch the surface, they illustrate the fundamental proposition that freedom is one whole, that anything that reduces freedom in one part of our lives is likely to affect freedom in the other parts. ~ Milton Friedman

Who you are when you are tested might not be pretty, but it's always real. ~ Rachel Friedman

Many of the jazz musicians whom are no longer here. You don't realize that it's history when it is happening and then time passes and you look at a picture and you say "Wow, there is history attached to that." ~ Carol Friedman

Do we know what practices would be effective in resisting aliens? Wouldn't the public have to be convinced, in all countries, that there is such a threat? When have the major nations on this planet shown they can agree on any military course of action? Earthlings are already spending a trillion dollars a year on things military. Where would the money come from? Krugman seems to be suggesting more lies are what is needed. How about everybody cutting their military budgets in half and feeding people instead? ~ Stanton T. Friedman

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

We are in love, in the very beginning part of it, when you don't ever want to separate your body from the other person's. ~ Rachel Friedman

Lord knows there's a lot of bad news in the world today to get you down, but there is one big thing happening that leaves me incredibly hopeful about the future, and that is the budding revolution in global online higher education. ~ Thomas Friedman

Louise Roth Fischer, for caring about the women in Klong Prem Prison and for supporting all South Africans incarcerated abroad. ~ Hazel Friedman

Something really big happened in the world's wiring in the last decade, but it was obscured by the financial crisis and post-9/11. We went from a connected world to a hyperconnected world. I'm always struck that Facebook , Twitter, 4G, iPhones, iPads, ubiquitous wireless and Web-enabled cellphones, the cloud, Big Data, cellphone apps and Skype did not exist or were in their infancy a decade ago. ~ Thomas 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. ~ Milton Friedman

In May 2012 - a year after the Arab awakening erupted - the United States made two financial commitments to the Arab world that each began with the numbers 1 and 3. The U.S. gave Egypt's military regime $1.3 billion worth of tanks and fighter jets. It also gave Lebanese public school students a $13.5 million merit-based college scholarship program, putting 117 Lebanese kids through local American-style colleges that promote tolerance, gender and social equality, and critical thinking. Having visited both countries at that time, I noted in a column that the $13.5 million in full scholarships bought the Lebanese more capacity and America more friendship and stability than the $1.3 billion in tanks and fighter jets ever would. So how about we stop being stupid? ~ Thomas L. Friedman

And from this story I learned about the geopolitics of taking out one's salami. ~ George Friedman

The saying in China is If you're one in a million, there's still 1,300 people just like you. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

I have a G4 at home. Theyre great machines for individual users, and I even know a few core Linux hackers who are having a lot of fun with them. But if you want to move the needle on the non-Microsoft desktop, youve got to look elsewhere. ~ Nat Friedman

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely. We can unlock our lives with a pencil tip. ~ Bonnie Friedman

Europe is in an economic crisis. Germany is the wealthiest country in Europe and it benefits the most from Europe. However, the German public doesn't want to pay for what they see as Greek indolence and corruption. ~ George Friedman

A slut is someone, usually a woman, who's stepped outside of the very narrow lane that good girls are supposed to stay within. Sluts are loud. We're messy. We don't behave. In fact, the original definition of "slut" meant "untidy woman." But since we live in a world that relies on women to be tidy in all ways, to be quiet and obedient and agreeable and available (but never aggressive), those of us who color outside of the lines get called sluts. And that word is meant to keep us in line. ~ Jaclyn Friedman

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

Today more than ever, the traditional boundaries between politics, culture, technology, finance, national security and ecology are disappearing. You often cannot explain one without referring to the others, and you cannot explain the whole without reference to them all. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

I love my cameras. I love contact sheets. I love the visceral thing of film and I'm not positive that I can replicate my lighting digitally. My assistants tell me I can, but, just stubborn I guess. ~ Carol Friedman

The countries that have risen and separated out as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union are, on the whole, following freer economic policies. Most of these states have freer government and less restrictions on trade. ~ Milton Friedman

When people went on vacation, they shed their home skins, thought they could be a new person. ~ Aimee Friedman