Economics Quotes - Page 21

• If the gains from trade in commodities are substantial, they are small compared to trade in ideas

  David Landes

  Ideas, Gains, Commodity

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• It is not a zero sum game. The simple idea of the gains from trade lies at the heart of the modern and the ancient economy, not the power of capital. There is nothing else to it.

  Matt Ridley

  Zero, Lying, Heart

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• In a high tech world the cure for the tragic shortcomings and perilous fallacies of human intuition is education, but education in economics, evolutionary biology, probability and statistics - unfortunately most High School and College curricula have barely changed since Medieval times!

  Steven Pinker

  School, College, Intuition

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• The river of my title is a river of DNA, a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues

  Richard Dawkins

  Dna, Rivers, Titles

  Richard Dawkins (1995). “River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• It is the process of evolution which identifies innovative benefits from any source and selects them on merit without prejudice

  David Landes

  Prejudice, Benefits, Merit

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• Innovations until now conceived by no one at all

  Israel Kirzner

  Innovation

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• Cost is always an object - the second law of thermodynamics sees to that

  Daniel Dennett

  Law, Cost, Thermodynamics

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• If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so

  Richard Dawkins

  Powerful, Hands, Evil

  "Science, Delusion, and the Appetite for Wonder". Richard Dimbleby Lecture on BBC1 Television, www.edge.org. November 12, 1996.

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• Scepticism and refusal of authority is at the heart of scientific endeavour. Scientific knowledge dictates economic possibilities

  David Landes

  Heart, Possibility, Authority

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• The consequences for human welfare involved in questions about human capital spillovers are simply staggering. Once one starts to think about them, it's hard to think of anything else

  Robert Lucas, Jr.

  Thinking, Welfare, Staggering

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• Human material existence is limited by ideas, not stuff, people don't need copper wires they need ways to communicate, oil was a contaminant, then it became a fuel

  Paul Romer

  Ideas, Oil, People

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• Experimentation has been the key factor in the success of Western capitalism

  Nathan Rosenberg

  Keys, Western, Capitalism

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• There is economics in biology, nothing is free, everything has to be paid for, there are costs as well as benefits to everything in life, for example, there was never sufficient natural selection pressure to develop better eyes, individuals could earn other things like smiley smiles rather than waste energy & time on better eyes.

  Richard Dawkins

  Eye, Energy, Example

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• There is a golden thread which runs through British history of the individual, standing firm against tyranny and then of the individual participating in his society

  Gordon Brown

  Running, Golden, Individual

  Gordon Brown (2006). “Moving Britain Forward: Selected Speeches, 1997-2006”, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• We are confronted by the appearance of social institutions unintentionally created, vital for the welfare of society, which are not the result of reasoned planning

  Carl Menger

  Planning, Welfare, Appearance

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• The desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Desire, Achieve, Graves

  "Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World" by Margaret Thatcher, New York: HarperCollins, (p. 327), 2002.

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• The companies only developed if the state did not intervene in the French fashion. If on the contrary a certain degree of economic freedom was the rule, capitalism moved in firmly and adapted itself to all administrative quirks and difficulties

  Fernand Braudel

  Fashion, Degrees, States

  Fernand Braudel (1982). “Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century: The wheels of commerce”, p.446, Univ of California Press

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• It is not the responsibility of the Federal Bank - nor would it be appropriate - to protect lenders and investors from the consequences of their decisions

  Ben Bernanke

  Responsibility, Decision, Protect

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• Always history is being made; opinions attitudes and institutions change, and there is evolution in the nature of capitalism

  Frank Knight

  Attitude, Opinion, Evolution

  Frank H. Knight, Ross B. Emmett (1999). “Selected Essays by Frank H. Knight, Volume 1: "What is Truth" in Economics?”, University of Chicago Press

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• The modern joint stock firm is the outcome of innumerable decisions made by individual entrepreneurs, owners and managers. For these decision makers the choices among alternatives were limited and the outcomes uncertain, but almost always there were choices. Despite the variability of these individual decisions, taken cumulatively they produced clear patterns of institutional change

  Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.

  Taken, Choices, Entrepreneur

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• The general struggle for existence of animate beings is not a struggle for raw materials, these for organisms are air water & soil, all abundantly available, nor for energy which exists in plenty in the sun and any hot body in the form of heat, but rather a struggle for entropy, which becomes available through the transition of energy from the hot sun to the cold earth.

  Ludwig Boltzmann

  Struggle, Air, Water

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• No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind.

  Thomas Sowell

  Two, Numbers, Political

  Thomas Sowell (2011). “Dismantling America and Other Controversial Essays (Large Print 16pt)”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• We tolerate, even promote, many things we once regarded as evil, wrong, or immoral. And then we seek "explanations" for an act that seems beyond comprehension. Remove societal restraints on some evils and one can expect the demons to be freed to conduct other evil acts.

  Cal Thomas

  Evil, Political, Politics

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• What would you think of a person who earned $24,000 a year but spent $35,000? Suppose on top of that, he was already $170,000 in debt. You'd tell him to get his act together - stop spending so much or he'd destroy his family, impoverish his kids and wreck their future. Of course, no individual could live so irresponsibly for long. But tack on eight more zeroes to that budget and you have the checkbook for our out-of-control, big-spending federal government.

  John Stossel

  Kids, Thinking, Eight

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• As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it's always for teachers, firemen, and police - but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of.

  Glenn Reynolds

  Teacher, Father, Law

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