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Milton Friedman on The free society

I want people to take thought about their condition and to recognize that the maintenance of a free society is a very difficult and complicated thing and it requires a self-denying ordinance of the most extreme kind.
The Open Mind
Interview, 1975, The Open Mind, hosted by Richard Heffner, Episode “Living Within Our Means” (1975)
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  1. At any rate, simple slogans like “The market will take care of it” or “noninterventionism” do not resolve the hard problems. We may very well agree on the direction we want to go in, but just how we’re going to go there and how far we’re going to go, that’s a much more difficult problem.
    Say 'No' to Intolerance
    Speech, 1991, Liberty, vol. 4, no. 6 (July 1991), p. 20
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  2. You can only aim at equality by giving some people the right to take things from others. And what ultimately happens when you aim for equality is that A and B decide what C should do for D, except that they take a bit of commission off on the way.”
    Milton Friedman Speaks: The Role of Government in a Free Society
    Speech, 1978
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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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