Skip to content
MiltonFriedman.org

Milton Friedman on The free society

The excuse for the destruction of liberty is always the plea of necessity—that there is no alternative.

Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people. He goes on to argue that 4 percent inflation and 6 percent unemployment were “very far indeed from crisis levels.”

Morality and Controls: II
Column, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202
Checked against the sourceRead the original

Where this comes from

Checked against the sourceThe wording was checked against the work itself.

Cite this passage

Milton Friedman, “Morality and Controls: II” (The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., 1971), Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/plea-of-necessity-1971

Quoted for commentary and research. Rights in the underlying work remain with its rights holder, so cite the work itself, not only this page.

Topics

He also said

  1. Can any policy, however high-minded, be moral if it leads to widespread corruption, imprisons so many, has so racist an effect, destroys our inner cities, wreaks havoc on misguided and vulnerable individuals, and brings death and destruction to foreign countries?

    Context. From a January 1998 New York Times article, written twenty-five years after President Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” listing the harms he attributes to drug prohibition. This question closes the article.

    It’s Time to End the War on Drugs
    Column, 1998, Hoover Digest, 1998, no. 2; first published in The New York Times, January 11, 1998, as “There’s No Justice in the War on Drugs.”
    Checked against the sourceRead the source
  2. The great danger to the consumer is monopoly—whether private or governmental. His most effective protection is free competition at home and free trade throughout the world. The consumer is protected from being exploited by one seller by the existence of another seller from whom he can buy and who is eager to sell to him. Alternative sources of supply protect the consumer far more effectively than all the Ralph Naders of the world.

    Context. From Free to Choose (1980), written with Rose D. Friedman: the last paragraph before the conclusion of the chapter “Who Protects the Consumer?”, on consumer-protection regulation. Ralph Nader was the best-known consumer advocate of the time.

    Free to Choose
    Book, 1980, Ch. 7 “Who Protects the Consumer?”, p. 226
    Checked against the sourceFind the book
  3. In my opinion, a society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.

    Context. His answer, in the question period after the lecture, to an audience member who asked whether a system could be built on equality rather than liberty.

    Milton Friedman Speaks: The Role of Government in a Free Society
    Speech, 1978, at 1:13:21
    Checked against the sourceWatch it

Think this quote is wrong, misattributed, or missing context? Report it and it gets fixed, not argued with.