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Quotes by Economist
"The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones."
75
"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
74
"Capital is that part of wealth which is devoted to obtaining further wealth."
74
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
73
"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
73
"The rich, by unfair combinations, contribute frequently to prolong a season of distress among the poor."
Poor,
72
"Here we were talking about economic development, about investing billions of dollars in various programs, and I could see it wasn't billions of dollars people needed right away."
72
"Dull would be the man who should merely tolerate this plan of social industry. Weak would be the position of him who should take an apologetic tone in defending it, or present its claims in a merely negative way, by exposing the evils and perils of the socialistic plan."
70
"On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity."
66
"No individual and no nation need fear at any time to have less money than it needs. Government measures designed to regulate the international movement of money in order to ensure that the community shall have the amount it needs, are just as unnecessary and inappropriate as, say, intervention to ensure a sufficiency or corn or iron or the like. This argument dealt the Mercantilist Theory its death-blow."
66
"Most important, I have learned from my colleagues and students."
65
"That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one."
65
"A FAILED RESOLUTION IS NOT THE FAULT OF RESOLUTIONS."
65
"The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result?"
64
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."
64
"Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
Self,
64
"It is not the fault of the entrepreneurs that the consumers,the people, the common man,prefer liquor to Bibles and detective stories to serious books, and that governments prefer guns to butter. The entrepreneur does not make greater profits in selling bad things than in selling good things. His profits are the greater the better he succeeds in providing the consumers with those things they ask for most intensely."
64
"The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm, capitalism is that kind of a system."
63
"My record at the University of California as an undergraduate was mediocre to say the best."
63
"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio."
63
"As soon, however, as capitalist competition has definitively established the equal rate of profit, that rate becomes the starting point for the calculations of the capitalists in the investment of capital in newly-created branches of production."
63
"When you resolve to do a thing, you make a decision to act, to go all the way, come hell or high water. It's something you're committed to accomplish, having firmly decided to see it through to the end."
63
"I do not know which makes a man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past."
62
"Profits might also increase, because improvements might take place in agriculture, or in the implements of husbandry, which would augment the produce with the same cost of production."
62
"The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government."
61
"Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital."
61
"In a recent decision of the Supreme Court, not made, however, by the full court, and concurred in by only four justices, it was held that the seller of a patented mimeograph could bind the purchaser to use only his ink in the machine, though the ink was not patented."
60
"The ordeal of virtue is to resist all temptation to evil."
60
"It is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
60
"Admirations are never paid in any way, try to make yourself of what you admire, and it will pay you with originality."
60
"The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing soundeconomic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit ofthis task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatanswhose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able toadvance plausible objections to an economist's argument, the more furiously do theyinsult them."
60
"'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded."
59
"True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going."
59
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