I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintainence of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind. It requires a willingness to put up with temporary evils on the basis of the subtle and sophisticated understanding that if you step in to do something about them you not only may make them worse, you will spread your tenticles and get bad results elsewhere.

And where are you going to get these angels who are going to run society for us?

I know of no example in time or place of a society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity.

So long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

On aging societies, there is no reason why a country that has a lot of old people can't be prosperous if, during their working lives, individuals provide for their retirement.

...theories should be judged by their ability to predict events rather than by the realism of their assumptions.

To the free man, the country is the collection of individuals who compose it, not something over and above them. He is proud of a common heritage and loyal to common traditions. But he regards government as a means, an instrumentality, neither a grantor of favors and gifts, nor a master or god to be blindly worshipped and served.