A liberal is fundamentally fearful of concentrated power. His objective is to preserve the maximum degree of freedom for each individual separately that is compatible with one man’s freedom not interfering with other men's freedom.
A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom.
Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.
Few institutions in our society are in a more unsatisfactory state than schools. Few generate more discontent or can do more to undermine our liberty.
Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.
I find it hard, as a liberal, to see any justification for graduated taxation solely to redistribute income. This seems a clear case of using coercion to take from some in order to give to others and thus to conflict head-on with individual freedom.
In a more careful use of the terms, not all 'schooling' is 'education,' and not all 'education' is 'schooling.'
Instead of fostering assimilation and harmony, our schools are increasingly a source of the very fragmentation that they earlier did so much to prevent.
It is important to distinguish between 'schooling' and 'education.' Not all schooling is education nor all education, schooling.
Life is not fair. It is tempting to believe that government can rectify what nature has spawned. But it is also important to recognize how much we benefit from the very unfairness we deplore.
Many highly schooled people are uneducated, and many highly 'educated' people are unschooled.
Moral responsibility is an individual matter, not a social matter.
One can shuffle inanimate objects around; one can compel individuals to be at certain places at certain times; but one can hardly compel individuals to put forward their best efforts.
One man may prefer a routine job with much time off for basking in the sun to a more exacting job paying a higher salary; another man may prefer the opposite. If both were paid equally in money, their incomes in a more fundamental sense would be unequal.
One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
One reason inflation is so destructive is because some people benefit greatly while other people suffer; society is divided into winners and losers.
One source of atmospheric pollution is the carbon dioxide that we all exhale. We could stop that very simply. But the cost would clearly exceed the gain.
Prices determined in a free market are a form of free speech.
Risks are not eliminated by imposing them on the taxpayer instead of on the capitalist.
Sincerity is a much overrated virtue. We are all capable of persuading ourselves that what is good for us is good for the country.
The ballot box produces conformity without unanimity; the marketplace, unanimity without conformity.
The capital resources of the nation are not increased by using the tax collector rather than the stock market to mobilize them.
The government official is supposed to be our servant. [But when an IRS agent] is auditing your tax return, which one of you is the master and which the servant?
The heart of the liberal philosophy is a belief in the dignity of the individual, in his freedom to make the most of his capacities and opportunities according to his own lights, subject only to the proviso that he not interfere with the freedom of other individuals to do the same.
The price system works so well, so efficiently, that we are not aware of it most of the time. We never realize how well it functions until it is prevented from functioning….
The use of force is…at the very heart of the welfare state—a bad means that tends to corrupt the good ends.
There seems little correlation between poverty and honesty. One would rather expect the opposite; dishonesty may not always pay but surely it sometimes does.
Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.
We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else.
We rail against 'special interests' except when the 'special interest' happens to be our own.
When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law….
When the law interferes with people’s pursuit of their own values, they will try to find a way around.
Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want.
[Inflation is] a hidden tax that can be imposed without having been voted—taxation without representation.
[The] minimum wage [is] one of the most, if not the most, antiblack laws on the statute books.