Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.
Interpretation
Universities are focused on educating students rather than entertaining others or providing sports careers.
Milton Friedman emphasizes the primary role of universities as institutions dedicated to the education of students, aiming to equip them with knowledge and understanding of fundamental ideas and values. He critiques the tendency to turn educational institutions into venues for entertainment, suggesting that the integrity and purpose of higher education should remain centered on intellectual growth rather than on athletic programs or spectator activities.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion about the purpose of higher education during a university panel.
The economic miracle that has been the United States was not produced by socialized enterprises, by government-unon-industry cartels or by centralized economic planning. It was produced by private enterprises in a profit-and-loss system. And losses were at least as important in weeding out failures, as profits in fostering successes. Let government succor failures, and we shall be headed for stagnation and decline.
There is no place for government to prohibit consumers from buying products the effect of which will be to harm themselves.
There is one and only one social responsibility of business - to use it resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.
The great danger to the consumer is the 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.
The strongest argument for free enterprise is that it prevents anybody from having too much power. Whether that person is a government official, a trade union official, or a business executive. If forces them to put up or shut up. They either have to deliver the goods, produce something that people are willing to pay for, are willing to buy, or else they have to go into a different business.
When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs?
I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there.
To implant fear in the minds of children is a crime. If parents try to rule the child by fear, then fear rules the child.
It's important, according to me, to train in small doses so as to not lose the joy of playing chess. I personally think too many coaching and training classes may take away a child's interest in the game itself. The essential thing to do is practise often and, in case of a doubt, to consult a trainer.
I always think of books as being like people. Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them.
With this new initiative, Disney is doing what no major media company has ever done before in the United States. And what I hope every company will do going forward when it comes to the ads they show and the food they sell they're asking themselves one simple question: Is this good for our kids?
I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.