Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Comment on this quoteShare via Email Print this Page Daily Quotes Archives2012-04-05 Apr 5, 2012One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.~ Milton FriedmanThe key insight of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations is misleadingly simple: if an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.~ Milton FriedmanTo 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.~ Milton Friedman Apr 4, 2012One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.~ Milton FriedmanSpending by government currently amounts to about 45 percent of national income. By that test, government owns 45 percent of the means of production that produce the national income. The U.S. is now 45 percent socialist.~ Milton FriedmanThe proper role of government is exactly what John Stuart Mill said in the middle of the 19th century in On Liberty. The proper role of government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government, he said, never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual's own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it's in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they'll do you harm, why isn't it all right to say you must not eat too much because you'll do harm? Why isn't it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you're likely to die? Why isn't it all right to say, "Oh, skiing, that's no good, that's a very dangerous sport, you'll hurt yourself"? Where do you draw the line?~ Milton Friedman Apr 3, 2012I believe that America is the greatest country in history and for good reasons, but America has been changing and not for the better. Our free society has been falling prey to a more repressive system with methods for the increased control of people. The return of groups and individuals to the controlling ideology of Imperialism and Marxism using the structures of Corporatism, Socialism and Democracy. The result is that this nation's foundational principles based on the ideology of Liberty are now in danger of extinction.~ Darren PerkinsIndeed, the U.N. is the main Soviet espionage center in this country.~ Jack AndersonI am appalled at the extensive evidence indicating that there is today in the UN among the American employees there, the greatest concentration of communists that this Committee has ever encountered. … These people occupy high positions. They have very high salaries and almost all of these people have, in the past, been employees in the U.S. government in high and sensitive positions.~ James O. Eastland Apr 2, 2012[T]he enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.... Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.~ Justice Antonin Scalia Mar 30, 2012Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional. ... [S]hould Congress, under the pretext of executing its powers, pass laws for the accomplishment of objects not entrusted to the government, such [acts are] not the law of the land.~ Justice John MarshallThat the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis, on which the whole American fabric has been erected.... The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority, from which they proceed, is supreme ... they are designed to be permanent.... The powers of the legislature are defined, and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written.~ Justice John Marshall[T]he framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument, as a rule for the government of courts, as well as of the legislature.~ Justice John Marshall Previous week's quotes Next week's quotes Share on Facebook Tweet Email Print