George Stigler was a delightful correspondent. In a letter from London in 1948, after remarking on the inconvertibility of the pound and the inedible, still-rationed food, he concluded, "So here I am losing weight and gaining pounds.

The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessary ' that there is no alternative

If the only motive was to help people who could not afford education, advocates of government involvement would have simply proposed tuition subsidies.

Statistics do not speak for themselves.

When something goes wrong, the natural tendency is to say, "By God, we need to pass a law and do something."

I think a major reason why intellectuals tend to move towards collectivism is that the collectivist answer is a simple one. If there's something wrong, pass a law and do something about it.

The future of private enterprise capitalism is also the future of a free society. There is no possibility of having a politically free society unless the major part of its economic resources are operated under a capitalistic private enterprise system.