Economist Quotes
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'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 -
Easterly, a celebrated economist, presents one side in what has become an ongoing debate with fellow star-economist Jeffrey Sachs about the role of international aid in global poverty. Easterly argues that existing aid strategies have not and will not reduce poverty, because they don't seriously take into account feedback from those who need the aid and because they perpetuate western colonial tendencies.
Amy Lockwood
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The delicate and intricate pattern of competition and cooperation in the economic behavior of the hundreds of thousands of citizens of Stockholm offers a challenge to the economist that is perhaps as complex as the challenges of the physicist and the chemist.
George Stigler -
I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.
William Gilmore Simms -
Economists can never be free of from difficulties unless they will distinguish between a theory and the application of a theory.
William Stanley Jevons -
An economist's definition of hatred is the willingness to pay a price to inflict harm on others.
Edward Glaeser -
A useful role exists for the economist is making calculations of the prospective costs and/or benefits of alternative policies. This role is precisely the one Keynes had in mind, I assume, when he expressed the hope that we would become useful after the fashion of dentists.
George Stigler -
I think you've got to watch out for anybody in high school who says he wants to become an economist.
Thomas J. Sargent
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Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.
Thomas J. Sargent -
Commercial concerns have expanded from family business to corporate wealth which is self-perpetuating and which enlightened statesmen and economists now dread as the most potent oligarchy yet produced.
Helen Keller -
Economists are coming to acknowledge that measures of national wealth and poverty in terms strictly of average income tell you little that is significant of the health or viability of a society.
Rowan Williams -
The conclusion to which I am ever more clearly coming is that the only hope of attaining a true system of economics is to fling aside,once and forever, the mazy and preposterous assumptions of the Ricardian school. Our English economists have been living in a fool's paradise. The truth is with the French school, and the sooner we recognize the fact, the better it will be for all the world, except perhaps the few writers who are far too committed to the old erroneous doctrines to allow for renunciation.
William Stanley Jevons -
It's my belief that one of the unconscious reasons which underlies the odd attitude of the establishment toward hallucinogens is the fact that they bring the mystery to the surface as an individual experience. In other words, you do not understand the psychedelic experience by getting a report from Time magazine or even the Economist. You only understand the psychedelic experience by having it.
Terence McKenna -
In short, I do not write for mathematicians, nor as a mathematician, but as an economist wishing to convince other economists that their science can only be satisfactorily treated on an explicitly mathematical basis.
William Stanley Jevons
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After taking risk into account, do more managers than you’d see by chance outperform with persistence? Virtually every economist who studied this question answers with a resounding 'no.'
Eugene Fama -
You can make even a parrot into a learned political economist - all he must learn are the two words "supply" and "demand."
Thomas Carlyle -
As an economist, whenever I hear the word shortage I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually price control.
Thomas Sowell -
When asked by the New York Times why she altered her position, she quoted the great economist John Maynard Keynes: “when the facts change, I change my mind.
Barry W. Lynn -
I'm an economist by training. And I know that what works is a permanent increase in buying power.
Sarah Steelman -
In most cases I start off with a sketch. But I'm also thinking about real images: out of National Geographic, out of fashion magazines, out of The Economist, out of Time. I'm making a sketch, but I'm using the existing images that have been put out in the world.
Wangechi Mutu
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Before I leave for the office in the morning, I read the 'Financial Times' and the 'Economist.' The key articles I need to understand are there, after which I focus on prep for the day.
Rajeev Suri -
Love is the felt experience of connection to another being. An economist says 'more for you is less for me.' But the lover knows that more of you is more for me too. If you love somebody their happiness is your happiness. Their pain is your pain. Your sense of self expands to include other beings. This shift of consciousness is universal in everybody, 99% and 1%.
Charles Eisenstein -
Becoming an economist was not a childhood dream of mine.
Harry Markowitz -
With various people complaining about "price gouging?... economist Walter Williams has coined a new term: "Tax gouging." But government is never accused of either "greed" or "gouging" ? not even when they bulldoze people's homes in order to turn.
Thomas Sowell