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Milton Friedman on The free society

It is true that the normal condition of mankind is tyranny and misery. We've escaped. We've been extraordinarily fortunate to escape into an island of freedom and prosperity. If we do not maintain that island of freedom and prosperity, if we do not maintain the essential features of the society which made that freedom and prosperity possible, there isn't a wide range of alternatives. We go to misery and tyranny to the normal state of mankind.
The Open Mind
Interview, 1977, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “A Nobel Laureate on the American Economy” (May 3, 1977)
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  1. It’s neither one nor the other. But it’s good for freedom. In principle, you ought to have completely open immigration. But with the welfare state it’s really not possible to do that.
    The Romance of Economics
    Interview, 2006, Interview by Tunku Varadarajan, The Wall Street Journal; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2006 No. 4
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  2. Freedom is a tenable objective only for responsible individuals. We do not believe in freedom for madmen or children. The necessity of drawing a line between responsible individuals and others is inescapable, yet it means that there is an essential ambiguity in our ultimate objective of freedom. Paternalism is inescapable for those whom we designate as not responsible.
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Ch. 2 The Role of Government in a Free Society, p. 33
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  3. We want the kind of world in which greedy people can do the least harm to their fellow men. That’s the kind of world in which power is widely dispersed and each of us has as many alternatives as possible.
    Interview with Milton Friedman
    Interview, 1973, Playboy
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