Question

history question! Can someone explain this quote to me? I have to relate it to Texas!
"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results." Milton Friedman

Answer 1

I found something...
FRIEDMAN: Let me give you a very simple example. Take the minimum wage law. Its well-meaning sponsors — there are always in these cases two groups of sponsors. There are the well-meaning sponsors and there are the special interests who are using the well-meaning sponsors as front men. You almost always when you have bad programs have an unholy coalition of the do-gooders on the one hand and the special interests on the other. The minimum wage law is as clear a case as you could want. The special interests are, of course, the trade unions, the monopolistic craft trade unions in particular. The do-gooders believe that by passing a law saying that nobody shall get less than $2 an hour or $2.50 an hour, or whatever the minimum wage is, you are helping poor people who need the money. You are doing nothing of the kind. What you are doing is to assure that people whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed.
We all know a famous road that is paved with good intentions. The people who go around talking about their soft heart — I share their — I admire them for the softness of their heart, but unfortunately, it very often extends to their head as well, because the fact is that the programs that are labeled as being for the poor, for the needy, almost always have effects exactly the opposite of those which their well-intentioned sponsors intend them to have.

This can relate to Texas...I guess..
found it all here...one of his interviews

Answer 2

can you explain what the quote actually means?

Answer 3

It is as it says, judging a policy by its intentions rather than the results of the policy implementation is a mistake. This is as texaschic101 states, the results are no where the intentions had predicted. This goes for any policy.