Gunnar Myrdal Quotes

• The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  People, Majority, Poverty

  34 Copy quote

• It Is in the Agricultural Sector That the Battle for Long- Term Economic Development Will Be Won or Lost.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Long, Battle, Development

  35 Copy quote

• So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Water, Sodium, Social

  30 Copy quote

• There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Cutting, People, Majority

  31 Copy quote

• Social taboos are shy like virtue; once lost, there is no remedy

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Social Taboos, Shy, Morality

  29 Copy quote

• Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Political, Groups, Fields

  24 Copy quote

• Correlations are not explanations and besides, they can be as spurious as the high correlation in Finland between foxes killed and divorces.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Divorce, Foxes, Finland

  "Beyond the Welfare State" by Gunnar Myrdal, New Haven, 1958.

  30 Copy quote

• The study of women's intelligence and personality has had broadly the same history as the one we record for Negroes ... in drawing a parallel between the position of, and feeling toward, women and Negroes, we are uncovering a fundamental basis of our culture.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Women, Drawing, Personality

  31 Copy quote

• As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Destiny, Events, Common

  25 Copy quote

• Education has in America's whole history been the major hope for improving the individual and society.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Education, America, Individual

  "Revue internationale de pédagogie expérimentale", Vol. 22-23, H. Dunantlaan 1, p. 367, 1985.

  20 Copy quote

• America is conservative in fundamental principles... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  America, Principles, Fundamentals

  Gunnar Myrdal (1995). “Black and African-American Studies: American Dilemma, the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy”, p.7, Transaction Publishers

  28 Copy quote

• People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Fashion, Thinking, People

  19 Copy quote

• Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Country, People, Would Be

  20 Copy quote

• Language, as we know, is full of illogicalities.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Language, Knows

  21 Copy quote

• The short-term international capital market is shrunken and erratic, and cannot be relied upon to cushion the effects of tendencies to disequilibrium in the balance of payments.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Balance, Banking, Erratic

  23 Copy quote

• Planned parenthood" in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples attitudes which, on the political plane, have been causing the trend towards economic planning.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Country, Attitude, Parent

  23 Copy quote

• It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Age, Heyday, Economic

  19 Copy quote

• All sudden and violent changes, whatever their causes or character, must tend to decrease the respect for status quo as a natural order of things.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Character, Order, Consistency

  9 Copy quote

• It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Law, Organization, Ordinary

  Gunnar Myrdal (1944). “An American Dilemma, Volume 2: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy”, p.810, Transaction Publishers

  11 Copy quote

• Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Country, Government, Vision

  19 Copy quote

• America has had gifted conservative statesmen and national leaders. But with few exceptions, only the liberals have gone down in history as national heroes.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Hero, America, Leader

  Gunnar Myrdal (1995). “Black and African-American Studies: American Dilemma, the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy”, p.7, Transaction Publishers

  4 Copy quote

• In the United States, and to only slightly lesser degree in all the other rich and economically progressive Western countries, public debate has at all times been dominated by the adherents of a "free" economy.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Country, United States, Degrees

  4 Copy quote

• In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

  Gunnar Myrdal

  Circles, Ideas, America

  7 Copy quote

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