Milton Friedman said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.
Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.
Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?
Said for an organisation they lead or work for; it counts on both records.
What would count as true or false
True: a verifiable Friedman source (an interview, for example the 1975 Richard Heffner 'Open Mind' interview, or a book or speech) shows Friedman saying, in substance, that a great mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. Mostly true: Friedman said essentially this with minor wording differences (for example 'one of the great mistakes' rather than 'the great public sector mistake'). Mixed: Friedman expressed a related idea but the quoted framing differs materially. Mostly false: the quote is misattributed but loosely reflects Friedman's views. False: the evidence shows the quote originates with someone else and Friedman never said anything like it.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Quote Origin: One of the Great Mistakes Is to Judge Policies and Programs by Their Intentions Rather Than Their Results Quote Investigator · 22 March 2024
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions.”
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E2 Quote Origin: One of the Great Mistakes Is to Judge Policies and Programs by Their Intentions Rather Than Their Results Quote Investigator · 22 March 2024
“In 1975 Milton Friedman appeared on the television show “The Open Mind”, and he was interviewed by the host Richard Heffner. Friedman employed the quotation.”
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E3 Yquotes.com
“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”
Reasoning
Quote Investigator traces the quotation to Milton Friedman's 1975 interview with Richard Heffner on 'The Open Mind' (E2). The recorded wording is "One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results" (E1), and a quotation aggregator gives the same wording (E3). The substance matches the claim, but Friedman said "one of the great mistakes," not "the great public sector mistake." The criteria treat this kind of wording difference as mostly true.
Cite this claim
Marc Andreessen, “Milton Friedman said the great public sector mistake is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” (said 18 April 2020). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_555184943f08, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_555184943f08
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More factual claims by Marc Andreessen
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Mixed
“they basically were funded by the federal government to be third-party censorship operations.”
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Mostly false
“The precautionary principle was developed by the German Greens in the 1970s”
The precautionary principle was developed by the German Greens in the 1970s.
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Mixed
“they all correlate to the concept known as fluid intelligence, which is the ability to rapidly assimilate and synthesize knowledge and then use knowledge to solve problems.”
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Mostly false
“we know for a fact that in human affairs, intelligence makes everything better.”
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Mixed
“It just can’t have been AI.”
Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.