The invisible hand in politics operates in the opposite direction to the invisible hand in the market.
Milton FriedmanThere have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money - money tempted to inflate - put out by politically independent entities.
Milton FriedmanNow here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons.
Milton FriedmanOne of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Milton FriedmanA real gold standard is thoroughly consistent with [classical] liberal principles and I, for one, am entirely in favor of measures promoting its development.
Milton FriedmanThe stock market crashed in October 1929. But that was not the cause of what caused the Great Depression. It was, in my opinion, a very minor element of it. What happened was that from 1929 to 1933 you had a major contraction which, in my opinion, was caused primarily by the failure of the Federal Reserve System, to follow the course of action for which it was set up. It was set up to prevent exactly what happened from 1929 to 1933. But instead of preventing it, they facilitated it.
Milton Friedman