Economics Quotes - Page 28

• In my youth it was said that what was too silly to be said may be sung. In modern economics it may be put into mathematics.

  Ronald Coase

  Silly, May, Youth

  "The Firm, the Market, and the Law (Note on the problem of social costs)". Book by Ronald Coase (p. 185), 1988.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any man who is only an economist is unlikely to be a good one.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Men, Unlikely, Economist

  18 Copy quote

• We see community organizations as major service providers and economic drivers rather than as recipients or distributors of charity, and coordinators of volunteers. Today they constitute what's referred to as 'the social economy'.

  Julia Gillard

  Organization, Volunteer, Community

  8 Copy quote

• It's an awful stretcher to believe that a peacock's tail was thus formed but ... most people just don't get it - I must be a very bad explainer

  Charles Darwin

  Believe, People, Tails

  9 Copy quote

• There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved

  Charles Darwin

  Beautiful, Simple, Views

  24 Copy quote

• The only answer to the endless chains of why, why, why is that the alternatives died

  Daniel Dennett

  Alternatives, Answers, Chains

  9 Copy quote

• In order to make a perfect and beautiful machine, it is not requisite to know how to make it. All the works of human genius can be understood in the end to be products of a cascade of generate-and-test procedures that are, at bottom, algorithmic and mindless.

  Daniel Dennett

  Beautiful, Order, Perfect

  "Cute, sexy, sweet, funny". TED conference, www.ted.com. 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Life results from the non-random survival of randomly varying replicators. The watchmaker is blind

  Richard Dawkins

  Survival, Evolution, Blind

  8 Copy quote

• The essential point to grasp is that in dealing with capitalism we are dealing with an evolutionary process

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Essentials, Creative Destruction, Process

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2013). “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy”, p.82, Routledge

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Now we see evolutionary trends in a variety of areas ranging from atomic and molecular physics through fluid mechanics, chemistry and biology to large scale systems of relevance in environmental and economic sciences

  Ilya Prigogine

  Environmental, Trends, Chemistry

  Ilya Prigogine (2003). “Is Future Given?”, p.22, World Scientific

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thinking is a physical process, the human brain is not exempt from evolution

  Steven Pinker

  Thinking, Brain, Evolution

  4 Copy quote

• Our aim must be to make our successive mistakes as quickly as possible. To speed up evolution.

  Karl Popper

  Mistake, Evolution, Speed

  19 Copy quote

• Economists have the correct insight that economics is a theory of choice, the key to the story is the variety of options and centralised political control limits the options. The best recipe is adaptive efficiency coping with novel uncertainty in a non-ergodic world, the maintenance of institutions which enable trial & error experiment to occur, and an effective means of eliminating unsuccessful solutions

  Douglass North

  Mean, Errors, Keys

  18 Copy quote

• It at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed.

  Charles Darwin

  Variation, Destroyed

  "Darwin on Evolution: Words of Wisdom from the Father of Evolution".

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What really happens is that the gene pool becomes filled with genes that influence bodies in such a way that they behave 'as if' they made complex, if unconscious, cost/benefit calculations

  Richard Dawkins

  Cost, Benefits, Body

  4 Copy quote

• The perennial gale of creative destruction

  Joseph A. Schumpeter

  Creative, Gale, Destruction

  Joseph A. Schumpeter (2011). “The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle”, p.37, Transaction Publishers

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living; that free scope should be given to varieties of character, short of injury to others.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Different Opinions, Imperfect

  "On Liberty: Mill's Works".

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conformity can be costly in a world of uncertainty which requires innovative institutional creation because no one can know the right path to survival. Over time, the richer the cultural context in terms of providing multiple experimentation and creative competition, the more likely the successful survival of the society

  Douglass North

  Successful, Creative, Competition

  21 Copy quote

• A diversity of approaches is necessary if there is to be a good chance of hitting on one that works. Progress is a social undertaking & achievement, because people see things differently

  Richard Posner

  Diversity, People, Achievement

  27 Copy quote

• I am convinced that both markets and free trade are good, but the traditional answer that we give to students to explain why they are good, the one based on perfect competition and Pareto optimality, is becoming untenable. Something much more interesting and more complicated is going on here

  Paul Romer

  Perfect, Interesting, Giving

  13 Copy quote

• Some individuals are better able than others to draw the right conclusions about the world about them and act accordingly. These individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce so their pattern of behaviour and thought will become dominant

  Stephen Hawking

  Patterns, Able, Behaviour

  7 Copy quote

• Competition is like experimentation in science, a discovery process, and it must rely on the self interest of producers, it must allow them to use their knowledge for their purposes, because nobody else possesses the information

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Self, Discovery, Competition

  17 Copy quote

• There was never anything so well devised by men which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted

  Thomas Cranmer

  Men, Wells, Continuance

  74 Copy quote

• The idea that human kind can shape the world according to wish is what I call the fatal conceit

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Ideas, Wish, Shapes

  22 Copy quote

• There can be no autonomous agent with unitary interests called 'society' that exerts causal influence. This is a logical impossibility

  David Buss

  Agents, Influence, Logical

  22 Copy quote