According to the Columbia World of Quotations, the root of this quotation is as follows: An axiom from economics popular in the 1960s, the words have no known source, though have been dated to the 1840s, when they were used in saloons where snacks were offered to customers. Ascribed to an Italian immigrant outside Grand Central Station, New York, in Alistair Cooke's America (epilogue, 1973), the expression appears in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, ch. 11 (1966), but has become most closely associated with economist Milton Friedman, who made it the title of a book in 1975. To research this expression, I did not have to go to the public library or find a copy of the Columbia World of Quotations. Rather, I typed in the quote at Google.com. Google searched more than 8 billion Web pages to find the source of the quotation and led me to this description. The entire procedure took less than one minute. Google did not charge me for the use of their database.
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