Economist Quotes - Page 22

• Suppose someone sits down where you are sitting right now and announces to me that he is Napoleon Bonaparte. The last thing I want to do with him is to get involved in a technical discussion of cavalry tactics at the Battle of Austerlitz. If I do that, I'm getting tacitly drawn into the game that he is Napoleon Bonaparte.

  Robert Solow

  Games, Battle, Want

  "Conversations With Economists: New Classical Economists and Opponents Speak Out on the Current Controversy in Macroeconomics". Book by Arjo Klamer, 1983.

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• The ability to work with systems of general equilibrium is perhaps one of the most important skills of the economist - a skill which he shares with many other scientists, but in which he has perhaps a certain comparative advantage.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Skills, Important, Scientist

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 15, 1958.

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• One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of partial equilibrium analysis (or microeconomics), generally associated with the name of Alfred Marshall and the other is the method of aggregation (or macro-economics), associated with the name of John Maynard Keynes.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Skills, Names, Two

  "The Skills of the Economist". Book by Kenneth Ewart Boulding, p. 19, 1958.

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• Physicists can only talk to other physicists and economists to economists... sociologists often cannot even understand each other.

  Kenneth E. Boulding

  Physicist, Sociologists

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• Thanks to economists, all of us, from the days of Adam Smith and before right down to the present, tariffs are perhaps one tenth of one percent lower than they otherwise would have been. And because of our efforts, we have earned our salaries ten-thousand fold.

  Milton Friedman

  Effort, Salary, Tariffs

  "Milton Friedman RIP" by Walter Block, mises.org. November 17, 2006.

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• All great economists are tall. There are two exceptions: John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman.

  George Stigler

  Two, Milton, Kenneth

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• Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

  Friedrich Engels

  Men, Political, Next

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1968). “Selected works [of] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels”

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• Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don't expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you'll have when you're 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

  Tim Harford

  Thinking, Giving, Advice

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• I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

  Sebastiao Salgado

  Photography, School, Photographer

  "Sebastião Salgado's best shot". Interview With Leo Benedictus, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2009.

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• What do you call an economist with a prediction? Wrong.

  Robert Kuttner

  Predictions

  "What Do You Call An Economist With A Prediction? Wrong" by Robert Kuttner, www.bloomberg.com. September 5, 1999.

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• Global warming pollution, indeed all pollution, is now described by economists as an “externality.” This absurd label means, in essence: we don’t to keep track of this stuff so let’s pretend it doesn’t exist.

  Al Gore

  Mean, Essence, Track

  Al Gore’s Speech on Global Warming at the New York University in New York City, New York, www.motherjones.com. September 19, 2006.

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• All economists should be locked up until they admit that they don't know what they're talking about.

  Andy Rooney

  Education, Talking, Should

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• I am looking forward to learning at the knee of Paul Ryan. He doesn't strike me as a politician. He strikes me as an economist.

  Todd Rokita

  Knees, Looking Forward, Politician

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• If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go and look at horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, "what would I do if I were a horse?"

  Ronald Coase

  Horse, Looks, Study

  Ronald Coase's speech to the "International Society of New Institutional Economics" in Washington, D.C., September 17, 1999.

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• Two hundred years ago the first liberal economist, Adam Smith, warned businessmen that they could absorb only a certain amount of rigidity. In the easy days after World War II... wage rises could be financed out of inflationary price increases.

  John Chamberlain

  Wisdom, War, Years

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• I guess economists, it's a bit like scientists, you have definitely fewer women in that field.

  Christine Lagarde

  Fields, Scientist, Fewer

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• Louis Kelso of San Francisco, a lawyer-economist, has for years felt that he has a radical answer to the problem.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Years, San Francisco, Answers

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• When I was Governor, Louis Kelso went out of his way to brief me. I was very impressed, but I was never able to get any of the economists in state government to give him the help his plan deserves.

  Jerry Brown

  Wisdom, Government, Giving

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• Economists believe there are three reasons why the Russian economy is doing so poorly. One, economic sanctions are working. Number two, low-price oil. And number three, Lindsay Lohan has quit drinking vodka.

  David Letterman

  Drinking, Believe, Economic Sanctions

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• There are men regarded today as brilliant economists, who deprecate saving and recommend squandering on a national scale as the way of economic salvation; and when anyone points to what the consequences of these policies will be in the long run, they reply flippantly, as might the prodigal son of a warning father: 'In the long run we are all dead.' And such shallow wisecracks pass as devastating epigrams and the ripest wisdom.

  Henry Hazlitt

  Running, Father, Son

  Henry Hazlitt (2010). “Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics”, p.12, Crown Business

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• Whatever may be the distribution of uncertainty among economists, the public only gets to hear from those who have certain opinions.

  Herbert Stein

  May, Opinion, Certain

  1979 Washington Bedtime Stories.

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• The corporatist-economic model of society appears to be governing us. Economists, often in the pay of transnationals, are deciding, for us, what democracy is, and will be.

  B. W. Powe

  Economic Models, Democracy, Pay

  "Towards a Canada of Light". Book by B. W. Powe, 2006.

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• The proposition that economist Ludwig von Mises was a feminist is an apodictic impossibility.

  Ilana Mercer

  Feminist, Von Mises, Propositions

  "Libertarian Feminists Make a Move on Von Mises". www.wnd.com. March 27, 2014.

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• A lot of lies and misinformation has been put about by eco nuts on the back of a report by an idiot economist [Sir Nicholas Stern]. Environmental head bangers are talking nonsense when they claim that aviation is the fastest-growing source of carbon emissions. Coal-fired and oil-fired power stations are the biggest contributor of carbon but I have yet to hear any fearless eco warriors advocating nuclear power as they drive around in their SUVs to their next protest meeting.

  Michael O'Leary

  Lying, Warrior, Talking

  "Labour targets airlines over carbon emissions" by Patrick Wintour, www.theguardian.com. January 4, 2007.

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