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Quotes by Economist
"Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas."
206
"I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
133
"Inflation is taxation without legislation."
111
"If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism."
95
"Ask five economists and you'll get five different answers - six if one went to Harvard."
92
"I wanted to give money to people like this woman so that they would be free from the moneylenders to sell their product at the price which the markets gave them - which was much higher than what the trader was giving them."
89
"Since, however, the reduced surplus value is to be distributed among them in like manner, the modification of their respective parts in the production of surplus value must find expression in a modification of the prices."
88
"There are cultural issues everywhere - in Bangladesh, Latin America, Africa, wherever you go. But somehow when we talk about cultural differences, we magnify those differences."
87
"I had no idea that I would ever get involved with something like lending money to poor people, given the circumstances in which I was working in Bangladesh."
82
"My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see."
78
"I went to the bank and proposed that they lend money to the poor people. The bankers almost fell over."
78
"Soon we saw that money going to women brought much more benefit to the family than money going to the men. So we changed our policy and gave a high priority to women. As a result, now 96% of our four million borrowers in Grameen Bank are women."
77
"The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be, and has often been in the course of history, the main source of mischief and disaster."
77
"I was teaching in one of the universities while the country was suffering from a severe famine. People were dying of hunger, and I felt very helpless. As an economist, I had no tool in my tool box to fix that kind of situation."
76
"The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations."
76
"Today, if you look at financial systems around the globe, more than half the population of the world - out of six billion people, more than three billion - do not qualify to take out a loan from a bank. This is a shame."
73
"But we have created a society that does not allow opportunities for those people to take care of themselves because we have denied them those opportunities."
73
"The Holocaust committed by the Nazis turned this country, where most of the European Jews used to live and where their culture used to flourish, into a massive grave. This is why initiatives to revive Jewish culture in Poland is so important."
71
"A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets."
67
"There can be no rise in the value of labour without a fall of profits."
66
"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department."
65
"They explained to me that the bank cannot lend money to poor people because these people are not creditworthy."
57
"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."
56
"He didn't say that. He was reading what was given to him in a speech."
53
"Virtue is more to be feared than vice, because its excesses are not subject to the regulation of conscience."
52
"I made a list of people who needed just a little bit of money. And when the list was complete, there were 42 names. The total amount of money they needed was $27. I was shocked."
52
"By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
52
"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
51
"Man is an animal that makes bargains: no other animal does this - no dog exchanges bones with another."
Man,
51
"Gold and silver, like other commodities, have an intrinsic value, which is not arbitrary, but is dependent on their scarcity, the quantity of labour bestowed in procuring them, and the value of the capital employed in the mines which produce them."
49
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."
49
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
49
"If a commodity were in no way useful, - in other words, if it could in no way contribute to our gratification, - it would be destitute of exchangeable value, however scarce it might be, or whatever quantity of labour might be necessary to procure it."
48
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