Milton Friedman Quotes

China after Olympics will progress very slowly. But the demands for freedom - on the part of ordinary people but also party members - won't be as easy to contain.

Democracy and economic reform go together.

The Arab Spring, nobody's in the streets demonstrating for radical Islam; they're in the streets with a window of democracy. They want our political reform, our social justice, and our economic opportunity.

[They let] friendship with the leaders in China obscure our devotion to freedom and democracy when those kids set up in Tiananmen Square, and I think it was wrong.

Chinese no longer crave so much for food and accommodation, but they do crave democracy. I stand by that. I don't know which model China will follow.

We are not seeking revolution. We just want democracy.

In the past 20 years and more since China embarked on the road of reform and opening up, we have moved steadfastly to promote political restructuring and vigorously build democratic politics under socialism.

I don't think there's any serious discussion inside the Chinese government about liberalising. I don't think anything's going to change in China until enough Chinese say, 'We're not going to play this game any more.'

Mexico has experimented with political change since the late 1980s.

If we expose the Chinese to our freedoms, it may create a greater hunger for democracy, reform and liberties in China.

The free world should not wait for dictatorial regimes to consent to reform.

My goal for the Arab world is to change the status quo, which is horrible politically, religiously, economically, in every way.

[We must] accelerate the reform of our political system, especially the building of a system of socialist democracy based on law …. Democracy is a worldwide trend …. If the Party doesn’t hold up the banner of democracy in our country, someone else will, and we will lose out.

We’re trying to create the first democracy in the Arab world.

Opening China to the world has dramatically affected the movement for democracy. The process of opening up is a process whereby the government loosens its control of the people. On the other hand, simply opening the economy is not enough. Very few people are actually able to enjoy the economic reforms. The privileged classes, or those who have connections with the privileged classes, enjoy more benefits from an open policy.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

I don't put any dates on these things. I don't say what is going to happen in one year, five years, ten years, but I am confident that the trend toward freedom in the Communist world is a basic truth.

We had a revolution 2 years ago, and we see a people moving from a completely authoritarian system into a democracy. They don’t know how democracy works. They don’t know the ingredients of a democracy.

Democratization was not a slogan, but the essence of Perestroika.

Once confined to a handful of wealthy countries, it [democracy] became, in a short period of time, the most popular political system in the world. In 1900, only 10 countries were democracies. By mid-century, the number had increased to 30…. By 2005 fully 119 of the world’s 190 countries had become democracies.

Democracy will not come to Mexico as the result of supposedly optimal policies prescribed by self-appointed saviors bent on economic stabilization.

For years, Taiwan has been dominated politically by a single party, the Kuomintang. People now want the place to be more democratic. They want to place more emphasis on human rights and transparency in terms of government decision-making. This is different from the way the government conducted business in the days when this was pretty much an authoritarian place.

We'll build a democracy here, even if it's with Nazi bricks.

There is no democracy without dissent.

A hashtag is not helping... A hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does not change anything. It's a hashtag.