Economics Quotes - Page 30

• A country which does not respect the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbours

  Andrei Sakharov

  Country, Rights, Doe

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• The addability of the happiness of different subjects is a postulum without which all political reasonings are at a stand

  Jeremy Bentham

  Political, Different, Subjects

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• No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or otherwise, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest shovel into his stores.

  James Avon Clyde, Lord Clyde

  Country, Men, Moral

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• The trouble with conspiracies, even those that are to everybody's advantage in the long run, is that they are open to abuse. If manipulators really had the powers claimed, they could win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science.

  Richard Dawkins

  Running, Winning, Long

  "The Selfish Gene". Book by Richard Dawkins, 1976.

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• Opportunism is self interest seeking with guile often involving subtle forms of deceit, especially calculated efforts to mislead, distort, disguise, obfuscate, or otherwise confuse. This vastly complicates the problems of economic organisation. Plainly if it were not for opportunism all behaviour could be rule governed

  Oliver E. Williamson

  Self, Effort, Deceit

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• It is easy to be compassionate with other people's money

  John Atherton

  People, Easy, Compassionate

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• If it's free put me down for two please

  Rolf Harris

  Two, Please, Ifs

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• It is here we come to the heart of the matter. The economic principle of comparative advantage', 'a country may, in return for manufactured commodities, import corn even if it can be grown with less labour than in the country from which it is imported

  David Ricardo

  Country, Heart, Principles

  105 Copy quote

• Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was explained to them

  Paul Samuelson

  Believe, Intelligent, Men

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• 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

  34 Copy quote

• 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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