Quotes by Economists

Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
Stephen Leacock
The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one's decision making at work and at home.
Daniel Kahneman
I would plead into the darkness, where are they, bring them back
Sonali Deraniyagala
There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty, that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism
Alexander Hamilton
God is triune, and all reality is structured in terms of Him. A brief definition of the Trinity might be this: One God without division in a plurality of Persons, and three Persons without confusion in a unity of essence. God is not 'basically' One, with the individual Persons being derived from the oneness; nor is God 'basically' Three, with the unity of the Persons being secondary. God is One, and God is Three. There are not three Gods; there is only one God. Yet each of the Persons is Himself God — and They are distinct, individual Persons. But there is only one God. "To put it in more philosophical language, God’s unity (oneness) and diversity (threeness, individuality) are equally ultimate. God is 'basically' One and 'basically' Three at the same time. And the same goes for all of creation. Both unity and diversity are important – equally important. Neither aspect of reality has priority over the other.
David H. Chilton
When, thirty-five years ago, I tried to give a summary of the ideas and principles of that social philosophy that was once known under the name of liberalism, I did not indulge in the vain hope that my account would prevent the impending catastrophes to which the policies adopted by the European nations were manifestly leading. All I wanted to achieve was to offer to the small minority of thoughtful people an opportunity to learn something about the aims of classical liberalism and its achievements and thus to pave the way for a resurrection of the spirit of freedom after the coming debacle.
Ludwig von Mises
[W]hat possible purpose does this lashing-out serve? Will activists be shamed into recovering their previous enthusiasm? Will Republicans stop their vicious attacks because Obama is lashing out to his left? It was pure self-indulgence; even if he feels aggrieved, he has to judge his words by their usefulness, not by his desire to vent. This isn't about him.
Paul Krugman
Many have blamed the gasoline shortages and long lines at filling stations in 1973 on the Arab Oil embargo of that year. However, the shortages and long lines began months before the Arab oil embargo, right after price controls were imposed.
Thomas Sowell
The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
Walter Bagehot
Writing is no trouble: you just jot down ideas as they occur to you. The jotting is simplicity itself- it is the occurring which is difficult.
Stephen Leacock
The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes ... in drawing a parallel between the position of and feeling toward women and Negroes we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture.
Gunnar Myrdal
The more underdeveloped the country the more overdeveloped the women.
J. K. Galbraith
The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.
Henry George
The wealth of a nation consists not in its mass of material things but in its system. The natural resources of South America are not inferior to those of the United States but the wealth of the two regions is vastly different. The land of India is far richer than that of Japan but the comparative wealth of the two nations is reversed.
George Brockway
It is but a truism that labor is most productive where its wages are largest. Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor the world over.
Henry George
It may be that those who do most dream most.
Stephen Leacock
Never let yesterday use up today.
Richard H. Nelson
Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth Boulding
Learn to think continentally.
Alexander Hamilton
A sportsman is a man who every now and then simply has to get out and kill something. Not that he's cruel. He wouldn't hurt a fly. It's not big enough.
Stephen Leacock
In order to stand well in the eyes of the community it is necessary to come up to a certain somewhat indefinite conventional standard of wealth.
Thorstein Veblen
The man who gives me employment which I must have or suffer that man is my master let me call him what I will.
Henry George
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction.
E. E. Schumacher
He who would be well taken care of must take care of himself.
William Graham Sumner
Technology means the systematic application of scientific or other organized knowledge to practical tasks.
J. K. Galbraith
Entrepreneurs in accepting risk achieve security for all. In embracing change they ensure social and economic stability.
George Gilder
The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air - it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world and others no right.
Henry George
Individuals learn faster than institutions and it is always the dinosaur's brain that is the last to get the new messages.
Hazel Henderson
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!
Karl Marx
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.
Alexander Hamilton
Religion is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl Marx
The public! why the public's nothing better than a great baby.
Thomas Chalmers
There can be to the ownership of anything no rightful title which is not derived from the title of the producer and does not rest upon the natural right of the man to himself.
Henry George
Property is theft.
Proudhon
A half truth like half a brick is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better.
Stephen Leacock
So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes to increase luxury and make sharper the contest between the House of Have and the House of Want progress is not real and cannot be permanent.
Henry George
It is a fact of history that those who seek to withdraw from its great experiments usually end up being overwhelmed by them.
Barbara Ward
Power is the recognition of necessity.
Abraham Rotstein
That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature but to the injustice of man.
Henry George
Poverty is an anomaly to rich people: it is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
Walter Bagehot
The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor.
J. K. Galbraith
Poverty is less a matter of income than of prospects. While the incomes of the poor have steadily risen through Great Society largesse their prospects have plummeted as families have broken into dependent fragments.
George Gilder
What we prepare for is what we shall get.
William Graham Sumner
All I know is I'm not a Marxist.
Karl Marx
If a man didn't make sense the Scotch felt it was misplaced politeness to try to keep him from knowing it. Better that he be aware of his reputation for this would encourage reticence which goes well with stupidity.
J. K. Galbraith
The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.
Walter Bagehot
So much perfection argues rottenness somewhere.
Beatrice Potter Webb
I have never understood why one's affections must be confined as once with women to a single country.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Many a man in love with a dimple makes a mistake of marrying the whole girl.
Stephen Leacock
Times of stress and difficulty are seasons of opportunity when the seeds of progress are sown.
Thomas F. Woodlock
The successful man is one who had the chance and took it.
Roger Babson
Life we learn too late is in the living in the tissue of every day and hour.
Stephen Leacock
Born in inquity and conceived in sin the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
Thorstein Veblen
Individuals learn faster than institutions and it is always the dinosaur's brain that is the last to get the new messages.
Hazel Henderson
Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries unite!
Karl Marx
It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard against the oppression of its rulers but to guard one part of society against the injustice of the other part.
Alexander Hamilton
Religion is the opium of the people.
Karl Marx
Religion is the opiate of the people.
Karl Marx
The public! why the public's nothing better than a great baby.
Thomas Chalmers