Economist Quotes - Page 16

• If you put two economists xin a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.

  Winston Churchill

  Two, Three, Investing

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• Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Mistake, Wonderful, Ends

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• I take my profession as an economist seriously and feel a commitment to the truth. This is incompatible with having to toe the political party line.

  Hans-Werner Sinn

  Party, Commitment, Political

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The economics of industrialized countries would collapse if women didn't do the work they do for free: According to economist Marilyn Waring, throughout the West it generates between 25 and 40 percent of the gross national product.

  Naomi Wolf

  Country, West, Economics

  Naomi Wolf (2009). “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women”, p.23, Harper Collins

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• The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

  Barry Ritholtz

  Intelligent, News, Use

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• Every company that has an economist working for him has one employee too many.

  Warren Buffett

  Employee, Company

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• I do not regard the Keynesian revolution as a great intellectual triumph. On the contrary, it was a tragedy because it came so late. Hitler had already found out how to cure unemployment before Keynes had finished explaining why it occured.

  Joan Robinson

  Intellectual, Tragedy, Revolution

  American Economic Association, Joan Robinson (1972). “The Second Crisis of Economic Theory: And Other Selected Papers from the American Economic Meeting, December 27-29, 1971”

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• In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labour, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness.

  John Maynard Keynes

  Men, Individual Happiness, Iron

  John Maynard Keynes, Royal Economic Society (Great Britain) (1971). “The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes”

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• Economic theorists should not make such a production about taking a rabbit out of a hat after having put the rabbit into the hat in full view of the audience.

  Joan Robinson

  Views, Hats, Rabbits

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• Progess, do not regress.

  Edward C. Prescott

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• The main insight learned from interdisciplinary studies is the return to specialization

  George Stigler

  Return, Study, Insight

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• Economists have much to be humble about.

  Paul Samuelson

  Humble, Be Humble

  "Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94" by Michael M. Weinstein, www.nytimes.com. December 13, 2009.

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• Economist and Africa expert Collier analyzes why a group of 50 nations, home to the poorest one billion people, are failing. Considering issues such as civil war, dependence on extractive industries, and bad governance, he argues that the strongest industrialized countries must enact a plan to help with international policies and standards.

  Amy Lockwood

  Country, War, Home

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• Moyo, a Zambia-born economist, asserts that aid is not only ineffective-it's harmful. Her argument packs a strong punch because she was born and raised in Africa. Moyo believes aid money promotes the corruption of governments and the dependence of citizens, and advocates that an investment approach will do more to help reduce poverty than aid ever could.

  Amy Lockwood

  Strong, Believe, Government

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• In an age in which economists take for granted that people equate well-being with consumption, increasing numbers of people seem willing to trade certain freedoms and material comforts for a sense of immutable order and the rapture of faith.

  Eugene Linden

  Order, Numbers, People

  Eugene Linden (1998). “The Future in Plain Sight: Nine Clues to the Coming Instability”

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• I'm an economist by training. I don't really work as an economist. I only worked briefly as an economist.

  Ben Stein

  Training

  The Onion interview, www.avclub.com. January 27, 1999.

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• Our belief in salvation through the market is very much in the Utopian tradition. The economists and managers are the servants of God. Like the medieval scholastics, their only job is to uncover the divine plan. They could never create or stop it. At most they might aspire to small alterations.

  John Ralston Saul

  Jobs, Servant Of God, Might

  John Ralston Saul (1999). “The Unconscious Civilization”, p.121, Simon and Schuster

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• Unsustainable situations usually go on longer than most economists think possible. But they always end, and when they do, it's often painful.

  Paul Krugman

  Thinking, Goes On, Painful

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• Economists got away from really questioning how the world works, how decisions actually got made. If something doesn't conform to neoclassical models ... people are not somehow behaving themselves properly.

  W. Brian Arthur

  People, Decision, World

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• Economists are always recommending the elimination of this or that market imperfection ... no astrophysicist recommends the elimination of planets that he does not like.

  Lester Thurow

  Imperfection, Doe, Elimination

  Lester C. Thurow (1984). “Dangerous currents: the state of economics”, Vintage

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• One speaks with great respect of economists, if only because they represent such a variety of opinions.

  Robert Menzies

  Opinion, Speak, Variety

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• Economists may not know how to run the economy, but they know how to create shortages or gluts simply by regulating prices below the market, or artificially supporting them from above.

  Milton Friedman

  Running, May, Economy

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• I have been....moved to wonder whether my job is a job or a racket, whether economists, and particularly economic theorists, may not be in the position that Cicero, citing Cato, ascribed to the augurs of Rome-that they should cover their faces or burst into laugher when they met on the street.

  Frank Knight

  Jobs, Rome, May

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• Economists did something even better than predict the crisis. We correctly predicted that we would not be able to predict it.

  William Easterly

  Able, Crisis

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• Economists are said to disagree too much but in ways that are too much alike: If eight sleep in the same bed, you can be sure that, like Eskimos, when they turn over, they'll all turn over together.

  Paul Samuelson

  Sleep, Eight, Together

  "Paul A. Samuelson, Economist, Dies at 94" by Michael M. Weinstein, www.nytimes.com. December 13, 2009.

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