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Quotes by Economist

"In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes."

"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."


"Value is consequently the necessary theoretical starting point whence we can elucidate the peculiar phenomenon of prices resulting from capitalist competition."


"Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late."

"We pay some price when necessary to bring down inflation but that price is temporary and is not large relative to the permanent gain from reduced inflation."


"The largest party in America, by the way, is neither the Democrats nor the Republicans. It's the party of non-voters."

"After all the fertile land in the immediate neighbourhood of the first settlers were cultivated, if capital and population increased, more food would be required, and it could only be procured from land not so advantageously situated."

"The importance of money flows from it being a link between the present and the future."

"Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship."

"The time I trust will come, perhaps within the lives of some of us, when the outline of this science will be clearly made out and generally recognised, when its nomenclature will be fixed, and its principles form a part of elementary instruction."

"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."

"Rules are to be initiated for the allotment of scarce raw materials etc; and their use and processing for other than war, or otherwise absolutely vital, goods is prohibited."


"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."

"There is no room at all for independent enterprise under any variety of State Socialism. Prices are to be regulated authoritatively; authority is to fix what is to be produced, and how, and in what quantities. There is to be no speculation, no 'excessive' profit, no loss. There is to be no innovation unless it be decreed by authority. The official is to direct and supervise everything."

"The business of a Political Economist is neither to recommend nor to dissuade, but to state general principles, which it is fatal to neglect, but neither advisable, nor perhaps practicable, to use as the sole, or even the principal, guides in the actual conduct of affairs."

"We had a booming stock market in 1929 and then went into the world's greatest depression. We have a booming stock market in 1999. Will the bubble somehow burst, and then we enter depression? Well, some things are not different."

"Moderation of oil prices would be very, very welcome. But overall I think we are in a position of stable growth, sustainable growth, and basically with inflation in check."

"Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil."

"I think we'll build a consensus for action on Social Security reform which will reduce that long-term unfunded obligation and put the system on a sustainable basis."

"The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments."

"He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it."


"And yet I would not freely exchange my science for those of my fellow laureates. They are forever confined in their professional discussions to the small numbers of their fellow scientists."


"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."
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