More Legal Quote(s) of the Week: Milton Friedman

Today is Milton Friedman’s birthday. He had many great quotes; here are three of them:

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
 
From The Open Mind (Dec. 7, 1975) (quote at 1:51)
 

“The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.”
 
From Free to Choose, Part 5: Created Equal (1980) (quote at 28:06)
 

“How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat to freedom? Two broad principles embodied in our Constitution give an answer that has preserved our freedom so far, though they have been violated repeatedly in practice while proclaimed as precept.

First, the scope of government must be limited.

*      *      *

The second broad principle is that government power must be dispersed.

*      *      *

The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.”
 
Capitalism and Freedom (1962), pp. 2–3

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