My interests were aroused, and my faith in the cliches of the subject destroyed, as so often with other subjects, by the discussions with my friend, Aaron Director.

Friedman stumbled in, late to the seminar as usual and reeking of cigar smoke and whiskey. He hadn't read the paper being presented, and halfway through he just gets up, walks up to the podium, socks the mother****er right in the face and takes a piss all over his lecture notes.

The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

...it is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.

I met my wife, Margaret L. Mack, at the University of Chicago. We were married in 1936. She died in 1970.

Why, when the economist gives advice to his society, is he so often cooly ignored? He never ceases to preach free trade, and protectionism is growing in the United States. He deplores the perverse effects of minimum wage laws, and the legal minimum is regularly raised each 3 or 5 years. He brands usury laws as a medieval superstition, but no state hurries to repeal its law.

My teaching began in 1936 at Iowa State College where T. W. Schultz was the department chairman.