From The Collected Works of Milton Friedman, compiled and edited by Robert Leeson and Charles G. Palm.

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Milton Lyons
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1 George J. Stigler, : Remarks. University of Chicago Record, 21 January 1993, pp Remarks at the memorial service for George J. Stigler, Chicago, 14 March Used with permission of the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library. For all of George s friends and the gathering here shows they are legion a light went out of our lives when George died. Somehow the world seemed darker. It no longer had the sense of joy that George was peculiarly able to impart. Yet at the same time that you feel a deep sense of sadness upon recalling George, the next moment you cannot help breaking into a smile as you remember one or another of the marvelous quips George was capable of making. George Stigler and Allen Wallis both came to the University of Chicago in I had already been here for a year, but had left to spend a year at Columbia. I came back in 1934 and met both George and Allen. From then on, George played a major part in my life, as he did in Allen s, and as he did in the lives of so many others. It was quite a group that we had here at the University of Chicago in that year It was here that George met his future wife, Chick. Margaret was her name, but everybody called her Chick. Allen has emphasized George s scientific approach; what comes to my mind is what devils George and Chick were at the International House. There was a big story going around about how they roller-skated all over the International House. They were enormous fun. In addition to George and Chick, there were Allen and Anne Armstrong, who later became Anne Wallis, and myself and Rose Director, who later became Rose Friedman. The six of us made a group here, which will remain one group as long as any of us lives. All of our lives were enriched by the other members of that group. As everybody recognizes, George was a great economist. He was one of the great economists not merely of the twentieth century, but of all centuries. He was a great economist because of his insights, but more especially because of his sensitivity to evidence. What testifies to that is the extent to which George was capable of changing his views over time. 1

2 Originally a strong supporter of antitrust laws, he subsequently came to doubt them very much. Originally like me, a believer in reform, he would say many years later, Well, I m only trying to understand the world, Milton is trying to change it. He thought it was a useless pursuit. If I go back to those very early days at the University of Chicago, it was the most intellectually stimulating year of my life. Partly because of the faculty, but much more because of George and Allen and Aaron Director. All of us were really, in a way, disciples of Frank Knight. We never necessarily agreed with Frank Knight. In fact we often disagreed with him. But it was very hard to start a conversation without saying, As Knight would say. Even today we always find ourselves referring back to Knight. However, I have found increasingly that those references have been replaced by As George would say, because he had the capacity of putting fundamental points in a way that you could not forget. Allen Wallis referred to the fact that in 1946 the University of Chicago withdrew an offer of an appointment for George because of [President E. C.] Colwell. I owe my appointment at the University of Chicago to George. If George had been appointed that year, I would not have been. But after George was turned down by Colwell on the specious ground that he was too empirical and not theoretical enough, somehow they approved me, even though I was far more empirical and less theoretical than George was. It just shows how strange are the ways of fate and chance. In 1947, Aaron, George, and I went overseas (the first time for George and me; it was not the first time for Aaron) to the founding meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Switzerland. When we got to Europe this was in 1947, just two years after the end of the war we landed in Britain and spent a few days there. People were living in war-time austerity, rationing. We spent two or three days in France, and then we left for Switzerland. As we left France, George said, You know, I now know the basic difference among Britain, France, and the United States. The British obey all laws good, bad, or indifferent. The French obey no laws, good, bad, or indifferent. And the Americans obey only the good laws. 2

3 A year or two later, George gave a series of lectures at the London School of Economics. They have been reprinted in a small book, Five Lectures in Economic Problems. He wrote to me about his experiences in London, and he complained about the food. This was when they still had rationing, food was scarce, and they were living mostly on potatoes, according to George. He also mentioned the fact that he was being paid for these lectures. He ended up the letter by saying, Here I am losing weight and gaining pounds. George had an extraordinarily sharp tongue, but there was never any malice in it. I knew George for almost sixty years, and in that time I never knew him to do a mean or malicious thing. Many people, especially in the early days, did not recognize what was going on. George could not resist making quips. He could not resist reacting to some silly statement with a sharp response. For those of us who knew him them and for the many who shared the universal affection that he inspired later, it s hard to believe that in his younger days many people found his tongue too sharp for their tastes. In those years when George was young and couldn t resist these sharp cracks, he made many enemies. Over time he mellowed a bit, but that wasn t the main thing; people got to know him better, to respect him more, and to realize that none of these quips were made in malice. They were all made because he just couldn t resist it. That was his nature. George was a marvelous writer. In fact I would say the two economists of the twentieth century who stand out for their literary style not simply for their content are George and John Maynard Keynes. These two really are the class of the field. Steve has already referred to his enormous energy. George would pretend that he never did any work. You would never hear him talk about work. He always had plenty of time to play golf or tennis or bridge or what not, and yet somehow or other a series of path-breaking articles kept coming from his pen. One thing after another came along. We used to kid him and say he must be staying up at night writing when nobody could see that he was working. But of course part of it was that he wrote so easily and fluently and well, and that s because he thought so easily and fluently and 3

4 well. There was no one from whom you could learn more by exchanging ideas, no one who would criticize your articles with the same incisiveness and sympathy. Allen Wallis referred to the fact that the Trustees wanted to get George to Chicago, after they discovered what a mistake Colwell had made. I was recently rereading some of my early correspondence with George. I had long penciled letters from Columbia, three quarters of which could deal with the subject of the economics of scale or with Chamberlain s imperfect competition, and then would come, Well you know, much as I would love to join you in Chicago, I think I m not going to accept that offer, and he didn t. He had several offers from the Department of Economics before Allen s, and Allen deserves full credit for concocting an offer that was so good that George couldn t refuse it. Allen conferred a great benefit upon the University of Chicago by bringing George here. Our lives were intertwined. The year before George came back to Chicago, he and I and our wives were at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto. We had a year in which we could do anything we wanted, and George, with his enormous energy, did many things, including writing some of the witty and humorous pieces that are collected in The Intellectual and the Marketplace. Economics you know is the dismal science, but if you ever want to see how a dismal scientist can make the science the very opposite of dismal, you should read those essays. If you haven t read his essay on The First Law of Sympathy, or On Truth in Teaching, you have a real experience before you. I recommend them to all of you. George was a great human being. He never tried to put himself forward in any way, but was sensitive to other people. There were no lengths to which he would not go in order to do a favor or perform a service for someone else. He used to visit us once in a while at our place in Vermont, and he would always make a point of leaving after three days because, he would say, You know, fish and visitors stink after three days. I do not know how to end except to say that there will not be a day that goes by that we won t recall some remark of George s, some act of his, something which he did. That will be 4

5 true in our personal lives, but it will also be true for us as economists, because his range was so broad and he dug so deep that it is hard to avoid taking advantage of what he taught us. 5

Fourth Meditation: Truth and falsity

Fourth Meditation: Truth and falsity In these past few days I have become used to keeping my mind away from the senses; and I have become strongly aware that very little is truly known about bodies, whereas