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Milton Friedman, a true champion of freedom and winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, has died today at age 94.

Flying the flag of economic conservatism, Mr. Friedman led the postwar challenge to the hallowed theories of Lord Keynes, the British economist who maintained that governments had a duty to help capitalistic economies through periods of recession and to prevent boom times from exploding into high inflation.

In Professor Friedman?s view, government had the opposite obligation: to keep its hands off the economy, to let the free market do its work. He was a spiritual heir to Adam Smith, the 18th-century founder of the science of economics and proponent of laissez-faire: that government governs best which governs least.

The only economic lever that Mr. Friedman would allow government to use was the one that controlled the supply of money ? a monetarist view that had gone out of favor when he embraced it in the 1950s. He went on to record a signal achievement, predicting the unprecedented combination of rising unemployment and rising inflation that came to be called stagflation. His work earned him the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science in 1976.

Professor Friedman was also a leading voice on education reform, advocating an end to the government monopoly on education. Some of my favorite Milton Friedman quotes:

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.

Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.

See Professor Friedman make the case for small government.

Statement from the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation:

Milton?s passion for freedom and liberty has influenced more lives than he ever could possibly know. His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. Presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike. The loss of his passion, incisive mind and dedication to freedom are all national treasures that we mourn for today.

Milton never chose to slow down; even at 94 he kept fighting to bring educational equality to all of America?s children. And it?s this vision, this drive for educational liberty that the Friedman Foundation will continue to bring to families throughout America.