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Quotes by Economist
"We have the deepest and most liquid capital markets in the world."
34
"Would you bet your paycheck on a weather forecast for tomorrow? If not, then why should this country bet billions on global warming predictions that have even less foundation?"
34
"In this country protection has always, to some extent, existed; but at some times it has been efficient, and at others not; and our tendency toward freedom or slavery has always been in the direct ratio of its efficiency or inefficiency."
34
"I still have my original social security card signed when I was 13."
34
"Common man does not speculate about the great problems. With regard to them he relies upon other people's authority, he behaves as "every decent fellow must behave,'' he is like a sheep in the herd. It is precisely this intellectual inertia that characterizes a man as a common man. Yet the common man does choose. He chooses to adopt traditional patterns or patterns adopted by other people because he is convinced that this procedure is best fitted to achieve his own welfare. And he is ready to change his ideology and consequently his mode of action whenever he becomes convinced that this would better serve his own interests."
34
"We must face the fact that the preservation of individual freedom is incompatible with a full satisfaction of our views of distributive justice."
34
"A rise of wages from this cause will, indeed, be invariably accompanied by a rise in the price of commodities; but in such cases, it will be found that labour and all commodities have not varied in regard to each other, and that the variation has been confined to money."
33
"Domestic inflation reflects domestic monetary policy."
33
"The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers."
33
"A rise in the level of saving can reduce aggregate activity temporarily but only a sustained high level of saving makes it possible to have the sustained high level of business investment that contributes to the long-run growth of output."
33
"Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive."
33
"The natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to compelling the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer."
33
"In Asia, a lot of successful economies that had been living on their own saving, decided to open up their financial markets to international capital in the early 1990s. So here were countries doing quite well, but they decided they'd borrow a bit more and do even better."
33
"I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions."
33
"If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this."
33
"Senior development specialists in the Treasury can be counted on one hand. America's government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments."
33
"Both free speech rights and property rights belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights."
33
"It is rather a problem of how to secure the best use of resources known to any of the members of society, for ends whose relative importance only those individuals know."
33
"To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm."
33
"Fundamentally, American society is composed of individuals who don't go out of their way to do each other favours."
33
"We're focused on doing the things that make the economy perform well, and as you do that, reduce deficits, for one, very important; secondly, keep growth rates high, very important."
33
"Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress."
33
"The European model is in danger if we obliterate the principle of personal responsibility."
33
"The Russian drama began at the end of 1991, when the Soviet Union mercifully ended. Russia and 14 other new countries emerged from the ruins of the Soviet Union. Every one of those 15 new states faced a profound historical, economic, financial, social and political challenge."
33
"Infinite growth of material consumption in a finite world is an impossibility."
33
"Less emphasis on inventories, I think, may tend to dampen business cycles, because business cycles are typically in the grasp of inventory cycles and heavy industry cycles."
33
"The frontiers of knowledge in the various fields of our subject are expanding at such a rate that, work as hard as one can, one finds oneself further and further away from an understanding of the whole."
33
"Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success."
33
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