Milton Friedman Quotes

When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.

Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

The major functions of the government are … operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

Whether you're a veteran or a millennial, it's hard to argue that big government has solved your problems efficiently, if at all.

The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything it must do everything badly.

This is so classic. Government comes along under the guise of fairness, fixes something, gonna make it fair, gonna make it equal, gonna make it affordable, maybe even make it free. What they end up doing is blowing it all to hell, screwing it up worse than it's ever been screwed up, then their voters bellyache and complain about it. And the same Democrats come back and demand that something be done, because their voters need a second chance.

Everyone on the Commission assumes that 9/11 resulted from a lack of government action. No one in Washington has raised the question of whether our shortcomings, brought to light by 9/11, could have been a result of too much government.

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand.

Beginning with the stimulus, Obama has repeatedly inserted the government into the free market for political reasons - and with disastrous results.

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today's problems are a result of yesterday's solutions.

I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.

Everything government touches turns to crap.

This country has far more problems than it deserves and far more solutions than it applies.

I've always been fond of the saying that when it comes to oversight and reform, the federal government does two things well: nothing and overreact.

There is no silver bullet. I know people in Washington want grand solutions for everything.

Any study of a society shows that every solution creates a new situation which breeds its own new needs and problems, new demands.

No government at any level has all the answers.

In human affairs the solution to every problem contains within it the seeds of a new problem.

No solution can be more elegant than the problem at which it is aimed allows.

Are our problems moving faster than our ability to solve them?

Theoretically, planning may be good. But nobody has ever figured out the cause of government stupidity—and until they do (and find the cure), all ideal plans will fall into quicksand.

The cure can be worse than the illness

The more the government plans fail, the more the planners plan.

The Republicans are the party that says that government doen't work, and then they get elected and prove it.

You've got the federal government in every part of our lives, doing things wrong.