Milton Friedman Quotes

Political liberty is nothing else but the diffusion of power.

Diffusion of power is the best way to promote democracy.

People don't seem to understand that the separation of powers is not about the power of these branches; it's there to protect individual liberty - it's there to protect us from the concentration of power.

Power always follows Property. This I believe to be as infallible a Maxim, in Politicks, as, that Action and Re-action are equal, is in Mechanicks. Nay I believe We may advance one Step farther and affirm that the Ballance of Power in a Society, accompanies the Ballance of Property in Land. The only possible Way then of preserving the Ballance of Power on the side of equal Liberty and public Virtue, is to make the Acquisition of Land easy to every Member of Society: to make a Division of the Land into Small Quantities, So that the Multitude may be possessed of landed Estates. If the Multitude is possessed of the Ballance of real Estate, the Multitude will have the Ballance of Power, and in that Case the Multitude will take Care of the Liberty, Virtue, and Interest of the Multitude in all Acts of Government.

The real guarantee of freedom is an equilibrium of social forces in conflict, not the triumph of any one force.

It is not be consolidation, or concentration of powers, but by their distribution, that good government is effected.

No, my friend, the way to have good and safe government, is not to trust it all to one, but to divide it among the many.

Their whole civil policy was adverse to concentration of power in the hands of any single individual, but inclined to the opposite principle of division among a number of equals.

The American political process almost instinctively compensates for excessive concentration.

51 percent of the people should not always get 100% of the power; 51 percent of the people should certainly not get all the power if they use that power to exclude the 49%. In that case, we do not have majority rule. We have majority tyranny.

Liberty is best preserved, where the legislative power is lodged in several persons, especially if those persons are of different ranks and interests; for where they are of the same rank, and consequently have an interest to manage peculiar to that rank, it differs but little from a despotical government in a single person.

Individual liberty depends on decentralized government

All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free

There's a very healthy tradition in America of skepticism of centralized power. If we ever lose the skepticism of centralized power, we'll lose the essence of the country.

No one can hold absolute power for long, controlled power endures.

Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power.

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.

Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.

Liberty does not exist where rights are on one side and power on the other. To be liberty, rights must be armed with vital powers. A people cannot be free who do not participate in the control of the government which operates upon them.

America is a fundamentally good country. We have good people with good values who want to do the right thing. But the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.

There are people who have comfortable relationships with power and people with natural antagonism to power. I think it's easy to guess where I am in that.

Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.

Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves.

Our culture is just a series of checks and balances. The whole idea that we're in a battle between tyranny and freedom - it's a series of pendulum swings.

I think the advantage of democracy is that it makes us less dependent on a group of leaders.