Kenneth E. Boulding Quotes - Page 2

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• In 1859 the human race discovered a huge treasure chest in its basement. This was oil and gas, a fantastically cheap and easily available source of energy. We did, or at least some of us did, what anybody does who discovers a treasure in the basement - live it up, and we have been spending this treasure with great enjoyment

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Race, Oil, Energy

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• The human experience can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all decisions are of the past, all decisions are about the future. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior. The character and quality of the images of the future which prevail in a society is therefore the most important clue to its overall dynamics.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Character, Past, Keys

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• What exists, is possible.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

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• Every culture, or subculture, is defined by a set of common values, that is, generally agreed upon preferences. Without a core of common values a culture cannot exist, and we classify society into cultures and subcultures precisely because it is possible to identify groups who have common values.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Groups, Culture, Common

  "Economics As A Moral Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, in "American Economic Review", 59 (1), (p. 12), March 1969.

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• Canada has no cultural unity, no linguistic unity, no religious unity, no economic unity, no geographic unity. All it has is unity.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Religious, Unity, Canada

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• The love of God again makes us free, for it draws us to set a low value on those things wherein we are subject to others - our wealth, our position, our reputation, and our life - and to set a high value on those things which no man can take from us - our integrity, our righteousness, our love for all men, and our communion with God.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Integrity, Men, Our Love

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• We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Reality, Numbers, Mind

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1990). “Three Faces of Power”, p.96, SAGE

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• A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Animal, Space, Brain

  "Economics and Ecology". Book by Kenneth Boulding, p. 225, 1966.

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• Conflict may be defined as a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions, and in which each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Party, Competition, Wish

  "Conflict and defense: A general theory" by Kenneth Boulding, (p. 5), 1964.

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• The World is a very complex system. It is easy to have too simple a view of it, and it is easy to do harm and to make things worse under the impulse to do good and make things better.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Simple, Views, World

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• I shall argue that it is the capital stock from which we derive satisfaction, not from the additions to it (production) or the subtractions from it (consumption): that consumption, far from being a desideratum, is a deplorable property of the capital stock which necessitates the equally deplorable activity of production: and that the objective of economic policy should not be to maximize consumption or production, but rather to minimize it, i.e. to enable us to maintain our capital stock with as little consumption or production as possible.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Littles, Satisfaction, Arguing

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• The proposition that the meek (that is the adaptable and serviceable), inherit the earth is not merely a wishful sentiment of religion, but an iron law of evolution.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Science, Law, Iron

  KENNETH E. BOULDING (1953). “THE ORGANIZATIONAL REVOLUTION”

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• The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that everything depends on everything else. The nine elements that we have described in societal evolution of the three families of phenotypes - the phyla of things, organizations and people, the genetic bases in knowledge operating through energy and materials to produce phenotypes, and the three bonding relations of threat, integration and exchange - all interact on each other.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Organization, People, Energy

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• It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Income, Patterns, Might

  "Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, Religion, and Ethics" by Kenneth Boulding, University of Michigan Press, (p. 142), 1970.

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• It is almost as hard to define mathematics as it is to define economics, and one is tempted to fall back on the famous old definition attributed to Jacob Viner, "Economics is what economists do," and say that mathematics is what mathematicians do. A large part of mathematics deals with the formal relations of quantities or numbers.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fall, Numbers, Definitions

  "Economics As a Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, McGraw-Hill, (p. 97), 1988.

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• Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Self, Practice, Criticism

  "Philosophical Perspectives on Accounting: Essays in Honour of Edward Stamp". Book by Edward Stamp and Michael J. Mumford, p. 147, 1993.

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• The evolutionary vision is agnostic in regard to systems in the universe of greater complexity than those of which human beings have clear knowledge. It recognizes aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas and experiences as a species, in this case of mental structures or of images, which clearly interacts with other species in the world's great' ecosystem.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Religious, Ecosystems, Ideas

  "Ecodynamics: A New Theory Of Societal Evolution". Book by Kenneth Boulding, 1978.

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• Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its own success. Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Community, Problem, Conflict

  "The diminishing returns of science" by Kenneth Boulding in "New Scientist", Vol. 49, nr. 744, p. (682), March 25, 1971.

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• If we saw tomorrow's newspaper today, tomorrow would never happen.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Today, Saws, Tomorrow

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• Even personal tastes are learned, in the matrix of a culture or a subculture in which we grow up, by very much the same kind of process by which we learn our common values. Purely personal tastes, indeed, can only survive in a culture which tolerates them, that is, which has a common value that private tastes of certain kinds should be allowed.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Growing Up, Culture, Taste

  "Economics As A Moral Science" by Kenneth E. Boulding, in "American Economic Review", 59 (1), (p. 12), March 1969.

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• Private property is a means, and neither its abolition nor its unrestricted right should be an end in itself.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Mean, Ends, Should

  "Principles of Economic Policy". Book by Kenneth E. Boulding, 1958.

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• Economic problems have no sharp edges. They shade off imperceptibly into politics, sociology, and ethics. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the ultimate answer to every economic problem lies in some other field.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Lying, Answers, Shade

  "The Economics of Peace". Book by Kenneth E. Boulding, p. 252, 1945.

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• The most fundamental form of integrative power is the power of love.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Fundamentals, Power Of Love, Form

  Kenneth E. Boulding (1990). “Three Faces of Power”, p.110, SAGE

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• We never like to admit to ourselves that we have made a mistake. Organizational structures tend to accentuate this source of failure of information.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Mistake, Information, Structure

  "Collected Papers: Toward a general social science" (1974) by Kenneth Boulding (p. 87), as quoted in "Environment, technology, and future generations" by D. A. Bella, 1978.

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• The social system tends to be dominated by images... especially of the future, which act cybernetically, constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Real, Social, Ideals

  "Collected Papers: Toward a general social science" (1974) by Kenneth Boulding (p. vii), as quoted in "Perspectives from the Boulding files" by Debora Hammond in "Systems Research", Vol. 12 No. 4, (pp. 281-290), 1995.

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