The Wisdom of Milton Friedman

Source: Mark Perry.

1. The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.

2. With some notable exceptions, businessmen favor free enterprise in general but are opposed to it when it comes to themselves.

3. The free man will ask neither what his country can do for himnor what he can do for his country.

4. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating.
  
5. If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert (MP: Or domestic energy resources), in five years there’d be a shortage of sand (MP: Oil, and high oil prices).

6. Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change.When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.

~From "Remembering Milton" by Allen R. Sanderson, who reflects on the contributions of Milton Friedman on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1912 and the 50th anniversary of the publication of Friedman's classic "Capitalism and Freedom."