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Milton Friedman on The free society

President Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you —ask what you can do for your country.’… Neither half of that statement expresses a relation between the citizen and his government that is worthy of the ideals of free men in a free society. ‘What your country can do for you’ implies that the government is the patron, the citizen the ward. ‘What you can do for your country’ assumes that the government is the master, the citizen the servant.
Capitalism and Freedom
Book, 1962, Introduction, p. 1
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  1. 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.
    Capitalism and Freedom
    Book, 1962, Introduction, p. 2
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  2. It is of course desirable to have a vision of the ideal, of Utopia. Far be it from me to denigrate that. But we can’t stop there. If we do, we become a cult or a religion, and not a living, vital force.
    Say 'No' to Intolerance
    Speech, 1991, Liberty, vol. 4, no. 6 (July 1991), p. 20
    Checked against the sourceRead the original
  3. 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
    Checked against the sourceRead the transcript

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