quotes about Economics
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Every man lives by exchanging.
-- Adam SmithSource : Adam Smith (2016). “The Wealth of Nations: the Great Master”, p.31, VM eBooks
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It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.
-- Adam SmithSource : Adam Smith (1827). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.355
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Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality.
-- Adam SmithSource : Adam Smith (2016). “The Wealth of Nations”, Xist Publishing
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Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back
-- Adam Smith -
Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.
-- Adam Smith -
Economists who speak the English tongue are strangely intimidated by mathematical symbols.
-- Al Nichol -
"Murphys law of economic policy": Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.
-- Alan Blinder -
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Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.
-- Alan Greenspan -
It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.
-- Aldous Huxley -
To balance Fortune by a just expense, Join with Economy, Magnificence.
-- Alexander Pope -
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Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth.
-- Alfred MarshallSource : Alfred Marshall, Mary Paley Marshall (1888). “The Economics of Industry”
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Every short statement about economics is misleading (with the possible exception of my present one).
-- Alfred Marshall -
Economies are supposed to serve human ends.. not the other way round. We forget at our peril that markets make a good servant, a bad master and a worse religion.
-- Amory Lovins -
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The redistribution of wealth creates dependence on the people to whom it is redistributed, it doesn't incentivize them to create their own wealth.
-- Andrew Napolitano -
Over the long term, absent of other barriers, economics always win.
-- Andy Bechtolsheim -
Economists are about as useful as astrologers in predicting the future (and, like astrologers, they never let failure on one occasion diminish certitude on the next).
-- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.Source : "A Clinton Report Card, So Far" by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., www.nytimes.com. April 11, 1993.
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The analyses ... often become too competent to be comprehensible...
-- Avinash Dixit -
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The more propaganda . . . conservatives spread for capitalist economics while at the same time preaching collectivism morally and philosophically , the more nails they’ll drive into capitalism’s coffin.
-- Ayn Rand -
Everyone has the right to make his own decisions, but none has the right to force his decision on others.
-- Ayn Rand -
People are not embracing collectivism because they have accepted bad economics. They are accepting bad economics because they have embraced collectivism.
-- Ayn Rand -
I don't expect to get 100 percent of what I want, but what we can't do is go back to the kind of top-down economics that doesn't work.
-- Barack Obama -
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Good environmentalism is good economics
-- Barber ConableSource : Barber B. Conable (1991). “The Conable years at the World Bank: major policy addresses of Barber B. Conable, 1986-91”
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The economic repercussions of a stock market crash depend less on the severity of the crash itself than on the response of economic policymakers, particularly central bankers.
-- Ben Bernanke -
It is not the responsibility of the Federal Bank - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their decisions
-- Ben Bernanke -
While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don't have any choice to make.
-- Bertrand Russell -
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The "human condition" is always to push forward for the better and economics is the study of that process.
-- Brian WesburySource : Brian Wesbury (1999). “The New Era of Wealth: How Investors Can Profit From the 5 Economic Trends Shaping the Future”, p.15, McGraw Hill Professional
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I wasn't actually very naturally good at economics. My brain doesn't work very well, in terms of mathematics.
-- Brit MarlingSource : "Brit Marling Exclusive Interview Another Earth". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. July 18, 2011.
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These days no one can make money on the ***** airline business. The economics represent sheer hell.
-- C. R. Smith -
"Law professors were never like economics professors," a Harvard Law professor told me. "If you disagreed with someone, you didn't call him a fool."
-- Calvin Trillin -
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Economics, politics, and personalities are often inseparable.
-- Charles Edison -
Everyone knows, or has strongly suspected, that capital theory is difficult.
-- Charles Ferguson -
Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable?
-- Charles Sumner -
Economics is like gravity: Ignore it and you will be in for some rude surprises.
-- Charles WheelanSource : Charles Wheelan (2010). “Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated)”, p.22, W. W. Norton & Company
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Economics dominates politics - and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness.
-- Chris Hedges -
The engineer who counts cost as nothing as compared to the result, who holds himself above the consideration of dollars and cents, has missed his vocation.
-- Coleman Sellers II -
The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died
-- Daniel Dennett -
You can't just read the Koran to understand Muslim life. You have to look at history, at personalities, at economics, and so on.
-- Daniel PipesSource : "Islam and Islamism in the Modern World". Interview with Tom Bethell, spectator.org. February 8, 2013.
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Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
-- David Attenborough -
There can be no autonomous agent with unitary interests called 'society' that exerts causal influence. This is a logical impossibility
-- David Buss -
Our global economy is out of control and performing contrary to basic principles of market economics.
-- David Korten -
Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities
-- David Landes -
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On one project I was hanging out with Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carrel, and Christian Bale, and trying to explain economics to them for a movie I'm an advisor on.
-- David PlotzSource : Source: www.slate.com
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Neither a state nor a bank ever have had unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power.
-- David RicardoSource : David Ricardo, John Ramsay McCulloch (1846). “The Works of David Ricardo, Esq., M.P.: With a Notice of the Life and Writings of the Author”, p.215, London, J. Murray
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Conventional economics is a form of brain damage.
-- David Suzuki -
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We cannot hope to achieve full employment and sustain it until we have mastered inflation.
-- Denis Healey -
If economists did not concern themselves with economic efficiency, nobody would.
-- Dennis Holme Robertson -
Time is a device to stop everything from happening at once ... space is a device to stop everything from happening in Cambridge.
-- Dharma Kumar -
Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure.
-- Edward Heath -
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Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave.
-- Ellen WillisSource : Letter to "The New York Times", February 27, 1997.
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Economic freedom has no security without political freedom, and political freedom can find its security only in economic freedom.
-- Eugen Richter -
The companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties
-- Fernand BraudelSource : Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce”, p.446, Univ of California Press
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The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.
-- Fidel Castro -
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You can always get sympathy by using the word small. With little industries you feel as you do about a little puppy.
-- Frances Perkins -
Economic activity is carried out by individuals in organisations that require a high degree of social co-operation
-- Francis Fukuyama -
Economic controversy is generally a thankless task. You cannot hope to make any impression on your opponent. Yet he is the only reader on whose interest you can count.
-- Francis Ysidro Edgeworth -
There is no sense in making statements that will not continue to be true after they are made.
-- Frank KnightSource : Frank Hyneman Knight (1997). “The Ethics of Competition”, p.178, Transaction Publishers
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...even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds.
-- Frank KnightSource : Frank H. Knight (2012). “Risk, Uncertainty and Profit”, p.24, Courier Corporation
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For every mountain there is another one. The big question is if you reach the top of the mountain, what then? What do you do then? I suppose you die.
-- Frank Lowy -
Often the masses are plundered and do not know it.
-- Frederic Bastiat -
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
-- Frederic Bastiat -
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To be controlled in our economic pursuits means to be controlled in everything.
-- Friedrich August von Hayek -
Only now did I recognize the reciprocal relationship which exists between manufacturing power and the national system of transportation, and that the one can never develop to its fullest without the other.
-- Friedrich List -
Fines are preferable to imprisonment and other types of punishment because they are more efficient. With a fine, the punishment to offenders is also revenue to the State.
-- Gary Becker -
I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour
-- Gary BeckerSource : Gary Stanley Becker, Ramón Febrero, Pedro Schwartz (1995). “The essence of Becker”, Hoover Inst Pr
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I don't think you can spend yourself rich.
-- George M. Humphrey -
The one profession where you can gain great eminence without ever being right.
-- George Meany -
Economics was the only profession where a person could be considered an expert without having once been right.
-- George Meany -
Cutting budget deficits can never be just an exercise in economics.
-- George Osborne -
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Where combination is possible, competition is impossible.
-- George Stephenson -
...it is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it.
-- George Stigler -
There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society
-- Gordon BrownSource : Gordon Brown (2006). “Moving Britain Forward: Selected Speeches, 1997-2006”, Bloomsbury Publishing
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Economics is the study of how society manages its scarce resources.
-- Greg MankiwSource : "Principles of Economics". Book by N. Gregory Mankiw, 2015.
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Modern economics and the welfare state borrowed heavily on the future.
-- Gregory BenfordSource : Gregory Benford (2010). “Timescape”, p.445, Spectra
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I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds ... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.
-- Grover Cleveland -
In manufacturing, where mechanization and the use of chemical processes are much easier, it is easier to raise productivity than in services. In contrast, by their very nature, many service activities are inherently impervious to productivity increase without diluting the quality of the product.
-- Ha-Joon Chang -
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Equality of opportunity is meaningless for those who do not have the capabilities to take advantage of it.
-- Ha-Joon Chang -
95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.
-- Ha-Joon Chang -
It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away
-- Harold GeneenSource : "Managing". Book by Harold Geneen, Chapter Six (Leadership), p. 89,
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...a discontinuity, like a vacuum, is abhorred by nature.
-- Harold HotellingSource : Harold Hotelling (2012). “The Collected Economics Articles of Harold Hotelling”, p.52, Springer Science & Business Media
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Democracy will defeat the economist at every turn on its own genre.
-- Harold Innis -
One nanny said, "Feed a cold"; she was a neo-Keynesian. Another nanny said, "Starve a cold"; she was a monetarist.
-- Harold MacMillan -
Stop-Go seemed more sensiblr than using the brake and accelerator at the same time - a practice that later became fashionable.
-- Harold MacMillan -
Contrary to economists' beliefs, the informal sectors of the world's economies, in total, are predominant, and the institutionalized, monetized sectors grow out of them and rest upon them, rather than the reverse.
-- Hazel HendersonSource : Hazel Henderson (1988). “The Politics of the Solar Age: Alternatives to Economics”, Knowledge Systems
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Economics is really politics in disguise.
-- Hazel Henderson -
That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.
-- Henry GeorgeSource : Henry George (1973). “The Land Question: What it Involves, and how Alone it Can be Settled”, New York : AMS Press
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Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over.
-- Henry GeorgeSource : Henry George (1911). “The complete works of Henry George”
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The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
-- Henry George -
The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.
-- Henry George -
Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man
-- Henry Hazlitt -
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.
-- Henry Hazlitt -
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There is no more certain way to deter employment than to harass and penalize employers.
-- Henry Hazlitt -
I was an economics major, which I enjoyed because I had a good business sense.
-- Herb Ritts -
Even though I didn't get a business degree, I enjoyed learning about economics.
-- Herb Ritts -
The budget should be balanced not by more taxes, but by reduction of follies.
-- Herbert HooverSource : Herbert Hoover (1937*). “American ideals and the New deal ... eight addresses upon pressing national problems”
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