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Quotes by Economist
"The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens."
59
"Local differences in the prices of commodities whose natures are technologically identical are to be explained on the one hand by differences in the cost of preparing them for consumption (expenses of transport, cost of retailing etc.) and on the other hand by the physical and legal obstacles that restrict the mobility of commodities and human beings."
58
"It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today."
58
"We've taken the view that if the rest of the world would democratize and create market economies, that would spread the benefits of prosperity around the world, and that it would enhance our own prosperity, and our own stability and security, as well."
58
"People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything."
58
"The first of all commodities to be exchanged is labour, and the freedom of man consists only in the exercise of the right to determine for himself in what manner his labour shall be employed, and how he will dispose of its products."
58
"For me, socialism has always been about liberty and solidarity, but also about responsibility."
58
"The first value of money was clearly the value which the goods used as money possessed (thanks to their suitability for satisfying human wants in other ways) at the moment when they were first used as common media of exchange."
58
"The increase in inequality in income is a longtime trend, but the pressure on middle- and low-income workers is going up rapidly. Especially if they live in an area where there are high housing and gas prices, like California."
58
"I recognized that information was, in many respects, like a public good, and it was this insight that made it clear to me that it was unlikely that the private market would provide efficient resource allocations whenever information was endogenous."
57
"Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program."
57
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
57
"The development of a political-economic framework to explore long-run institutional change occupied me during all of the 1980s and led to the publication of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance in 1990."
57
"If we disregard the exchange of present goods for future goods, and restrict our considerations for the time being to those cases in which the only exchanges are those between present goods and present money, we shall at once observe a fundamental difference between the effects of an isolated variation in a single commodity-price, emanating solely from the commodity side, and the effects of a variation in the exchange-ratio between money and other economic goods in general, emanating from the monetary side."
57
"Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles."
57
"Double-digit inflation is a terrible thing - and it got up to 14 or 15 percent on a monthly basis for a while, shortly after I became chairman of the Fed."
57
"The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem."
57
"We have escapist fiction, so why not escapist biography?"
56
"What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?"
56
"Where we're coming down is we currently have $787 billion of stimulus that's been passed. We're certainly focusing on spending that money as quickly and as efficiently and as transparently as we can. We think that's absolutely the right strategy."
56
"We cannot properly defend and protect ourselves without confidence. Confidence is vital, we must learn that confidence in life matters a lot."
56
"I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."
55
"Like Odysseus, the President looked wiser when he was seated."
55
"It was wrong to allow Stalin to shape the European landscape of the 20th century. It would be even more wrong to let him shape the landscape of the 21st century."
55
"What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years."
55
"The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo."
55
"The market system is the basis of our civilization. Its only alternative is the FA1?4hrer principle."
55
"Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it."
55
"Knowing that you can endure a very difficult challenge offers a degree of confidence that the next challenge can also be endured."
55
"Any informed borrower is simply less vulnerable to fraud and abuse."
54
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