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Quotes by Economist

"Contagion has become very much a phenomenon, and it's a phenomenon of globalization."

"We do not want to live in a theocracy. We should maintain that barrier and government has no business telling someone what they ought to believe or how they should conduct their private lives."

"An early fascination with higher mathematics at the university level blossomed into speculative thinking that could provide a basis for dealing with economic issues."

"It is obvious, moreover, that the formation of price in capitalist society must differ from the formation of price in social conditions based upon the simple production of commodities."

"The liberal ideal is that everyone should have fair access and fair opportunity. This is not equality of result. It's equality of opportunity. There's a fundamental difference."

"The HoLee model was the first term structure model. I remember reading their paper soon after it was published and as it was fairly different from many of the other papers that I had read, I had to read it quite a few times. I realized that it was a really important paper."

"The first issue to be settled is whether socialism has a right to exist Are its allegations concerning the present system true? Is industry proceeding on a principle of fraud? I wish to test the power of recent economic theory to give an exact answer to this question."

"I had to think whether, after 50 years of hard slog, I was still lucid and fresh enough for the job."

"I attended schools in Seattle through the University of Washington, from which I was graduated in 1931. I spent the next year at Northwestern University."

"It's not government's business what people do in their private bedrooms."


"There are times in politics when you must be on the right side and lose."


"If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error."

"The most important ways in which I think the Internet will affect the big issue is that it will make it more difficult for government to collect taxes."

"Lucas attended a conference on rational expectations at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1973. The day after the conference, I received a call from Pittsburgh."

"The unions still have a job to do, representing their members' interests to governments and parliaments. And I think collective agreements still have a role, alongside markets and laws."

"After the many rumours that we had heard about Hitler and the published criticisms we had read about him, we were pleasantly impressed. His appearance was neither pretentious nor affected."

"We are entering a new phase in human history - one in which fewer and fewer workers will be needed to produce the goods and services for the global population."

"Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen."

"If you look at the history of the American capital market, there's probably no innovation more important than the idea of generally accepted accountancy principles."


"Power is not something that can be assumed or discarded at will like underwear."

"No man pays double or twice for the same thing, forasmuch as nothing can be spent but once."

"Admirations are never paid in any way, try to make yourself of what you admire, and it will pay you with originality."

"Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular."

"Poorly paid labor is inefficient labor, the world over."

"I work for a Government I despise for ends I think criminal."

"It may be those who do most, dream most."

"Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours."

"The expansion of the market creates a need for enhanced and more regular supply, and this in turn impels commercial capital to acquire control of production as well."

"The antitrust litigation currently in the federal courts in the U.S. against Monsanto will be the test case in the life sciences, just as the Microsoft case was the test case in the information sciences."

"I started working and publishing in price theory by 1938."
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