Arthur Melvin Okun Quotes
The market, if it can be kept honest and competitive, does provide very strong incentives for work effort and productive contributions. In their absence, society would thrash about for alternative incentives-some unreliable, like altruism; some perilous like collective loyalty; some intolerable, like coercion or oppression.
Quotes to Explore
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You set your goals to a point where they're attainable, but far enough away that you have to really go get them. And every year I push my goals a little bit farther away, and every year I work a little bit harder to get them.
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Timidity does not inspire bold acts.
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Somebody was asking me the other day - President Bush is now talking about freedom for the Arab world. I say, well, that's great. I was talking about that fifty years ago.
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I don't think I've ever sent a text to Gordon Brown because I'm confident that he would absolutely have no idea how to receive it. He barely managed to master WordPerfect 4.1.
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I'm extremely fascinated by marriage. I want to study marriage. I want to learn about it. I want to know it. I want to figure out whether or not I want to do it. I'm not just going to leap into it, because that's not good for anybody.
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We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist.
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I'm lucky in some ways in that I really don't need more than five or so hours of sleep.
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I am a scientist. Mine is a professional world that achieves great things for humanity.
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Your belief system saturates the space around you.
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In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time.
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The thing that I think a lot of guys need to know how to do is not take your mother's advice about honesty being the best policy. Listen to your cool, drunk uncle who tells you to lie. Those are the relationships that last.
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When I was seventeen, I worked as a counsellor at a co-ed sleep-away camp for eight weeks. I loved it but it could be harrowing - it was far too much responsibility for someone my age.
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The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
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Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
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Psychoanalytic investigation has shown that in mental patients excessive affection often turns to violent hostility.
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My father was dark skinned because he was Tatar. Sometimes Tatars can look Brazilian.
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Do I think Vince McMahon was looking at my matches in Japan going, 'We need him?' No. He wasn't. He's too busy. There's no way. But somebody may have been looking and going, 'All right, I like this guy. Let's give him a shot.'
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It's believing you can push through the exhaustion just to be able to sing after you do a cartwheel or a split.
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I don't think any of us would be who we are if our parents weren't who they were. People that are in show business, and their parents are not in show business, their parents probably motivated them to get in show business.
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I've accentuated the look over the years. As a comic, you try something and if it works you go with it and grind it to death.
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Every now and then, people will recognize me at restaurants or Universal Studios or something. I'll always take a picture with them if they want. I mean, that's what telling stories and acting for a living are for - for the people.
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Treat your enemies with courtesy, and you'll see how valuable it really is. It costs little but pays a nice dividend: those who honor are honored. Politeness and a sense of honor have this advantage: we bestow them on others without losing a thing.
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If I'm going to be away from my family, I'd rather it be working with my friends.
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The market, if it can be kept honest and competitive, does provide very strong incentives for work effort and productive contributions. In their absence, society would thrash about for alternative incentives-some unreliable, like altruism; some perilous like collective loyalty; some intolerable, like coercion or oppression.
