Economics Quotes

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if t...

The poor man is called a socialist if he believes that the wealth of the rich should be divided amon...

The theory of Economics must begin with a correct theory of consumption.

... toxic derivatives were underpinned by toxic economics, which, in turn, were no more than motivat...

Regular crises perpetuate the past by reinvigorating cycles which started long ago. In contrast, (ca...

To attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unn...

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family can scarce be folly in that of a great kingd...

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversatio...

In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise...

Here’s the solution. We need a CO2 tax, revenue-neutral, to replace taxation on employment, which wa...

Evening work is economical. Power comes most cheaply by night.

...there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thoug...

There are only two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are i...

The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of...

It's true that private enterprise is extremely flexible, But its only good within very narrow limits...

International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

(1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them til...

The three wealthiest people in the world own more than the GDP of forty-eight countries!

A society can be Pareto optimal and still perfectly disgusting.

It is hard to understand how a compassionate world order can include so many people afflicted by acu...

If a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the...

Feminists know that if women are paid equal wages for equal work, women will gain sexual as well as ...

We could manage to survive without money changers and stockbrokers. We should find it harder to do w...

The rich feel much less need than their predecessors to account for their wealth, whether to society...

At times there's something so precise and mathematically chilling about nationalism.Build a dam to t...

Socialism may be established by force, as in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—or by vote, as ...

Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade...

In a system of full capitalism, there should be (but, historically, has not yet been) a complete sep...

Economics has many substantive areas of knowledge where there is agreement, but also contains areas ...

I do not intend to defend capitalism or capitalists. They, like everything human, have their defects...

State ownership! It leads only to absurd and monstrous conclusions; state ownership means state mono...

If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unem...

But the economy's out of control. Money just doesn't need human beings anymore. Most of us only get ...

Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanctio...

When I discussed the nature of value, I observed that value is nothing inherent in goods and that it...

What should have died along with communism is the belief that modern societies can be run on a singl...

So what’s your alternative?” people say, as if that’s logic. We don’t have to have an alternative, t...

The basic idea that if you increase government spending or you cut people's taxes that stimulates th...

In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with...

The number of games went up or down according to the brutal, elegant logic of the economics of fun:a...

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It’s like trying to develop the ability t...

The United States of America was a pirate nation for the first one hundred years of its existence, r...

The world is better served by syncretic economists and policymakers who can hold multiple ideas in t...

If economics were only about profit maximization, it would be just another name for business adminis...

The economics we need is of the "seminar room" variety, not the "rule-of-thumb" kind. It is an econo...

Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our...

If there are still honest-smart men and women within those old and noble traditions, they should thi...

IMF is really designed to protect creditors not debtors.

[A] great embarrassing fact… haunts all attempts to represent the market as the highest form of huma...

This is a great trap of the twentieth century: on one side is the logic of the market, where we like...

At this point we can finally see what's really at stake in our peculiar habit of defining ourselves ...

Freuchen tells how one day, after coming home hungry from an unsuccessful walrus-hunting expedition,...

Fierce, and what capitalists sometimes call 'ruinous' competition tends, therefore, to produce leap-...

Failure to recognize the historical specificity of the bourgeois conception of rights and duties lea...

We can't, it seems, live without [capitalism] even as we complain about it.

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There's no way a...

We must achieve both security and solvency. In fact, the foundation of military strength is economic...

Most of us are pseudo-scholars...for we are a very large and quite a powerful class, eminent in Chur...

Whatever Latin America sells—raw materials or manufactures—its chief export product is really cheap ...

An economic system which can only expand or expire must be false to all that is human.

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is ...

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the "winner" as someone other than the agent who i...

Be careful... any time you find yourself defining the "winner" as someone other than the agent who i...

But a progressive policy needs more than just a bigger break with the economic and moral assumptions...

The test of a progressive policy is not private but public, not just rising income and consumption f...

It rests on the attempt since the 1970s to translate a pathological degeneration of the principle of...

Two mystic states can be dissociated: the ecstatic-beneficent-and-benevolent, contemplation of the d...

In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse o...

We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part o...

Two ideas are opposed — not concepts or abstractions, but Ideas which were in the blood of men befor...

Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its...

We have always known that heedless self interest was bad morals, we now know that it is bad economic...

Debts are subject to the laws of mathematics rather than physics. Unlike wealth, which is subject to...

It is a curious thought that the earliest description of the steam-engine in antiquity describes its...

In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from...

If you invest all your energy in economics, world commerce, parliamentarianism, military engagements...

The profit of the one is the profit of the other.

Experience teaches effectually, but brutally. It makes us acquainted with all the effects of an acti...

The law is guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish.

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son ha...

I can never look at these apparent contradictions between the great laws of nature without a feeling...

We need not be surprised at this. On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, m...

But things have been so admirably arranged by the Divine inventor of social order that in this, as i...

If the bringing of children into the world is today an economic burden, it is because the social sys...

Modern prophets say that our economics have failed us. No! It is not our economics which have failed...

Propounding peace and love without practical or institutional engagement is delusion, not virtue.

Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping ...

Their job as leader was not to solve the problem – the president really has little control over the ...

The problem with gross domestic product is the gross bit. There are no deductions involved: all econ...

Governments are deemed to succeed or fail by how well they make money go round, regardless of whethe...

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the...

Monopoly is a market, or part of a market, reserved to the exclusive possession of one or more selle...

It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should...

In those meetings, I learned that even economic diagrams needn’t be linear. Ours was a nest of conce...

War has been the necessary and inevitable consequence of the establishment of a monopoly on security...

After the collapse of socialism, capitalism remained without a rival. This unusual situation unleash...

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Economics should be defined in terms of what it is about. It should be about how people produce thin...

If the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in economics textbooks, it would grind ...

Recognizing that the boundaries of the market are ambiguous and cannot be determined in an objective...