Charles Brunie, Chairman of the Board of The American Spectator, has a lovely piece on City Journal today remembering his longtime friend Milton Friedman. Brunie recounts Friedman’s fearless adherence to his philosophical principles, which led him to make uncannily accurate economic forecasts even as he was held in opprobrium by much of the academic world. In addition to a series of fascinating disquisitions on subjects ranging from monetary policy to J.P. Morgan, Jr.’s role in the Great Depression, Brunie provides personal glimpses of Friedman’s generosity, graciousness, and wry humor. The last is best encapsulated in some of the Friedman epigrams with which Brunie concludes, like this:

“I’ve often wondered whether the difference between mankind and animals is not so much the ability to reason as it is the ability to rationalize.”