Showing posts with label GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS. Show all posts

May 30, 2022

GREAT QUOTES OF ADAM SMITH | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 


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GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS
GREAT QUOTES OF ADAM SMITH


“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.” - Adam Smith

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” - Adam Smith

“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition.” - Adam Smith

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.” - Adam Smith

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages” - Adam Smith

“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.” - Adam Smith

“The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. ” - Adam Smith

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.” - Adam Smith

“No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.” - Adam Smith

“In regards to the price of commodities, the rise of wages operates as simple interest does, the rise of profit operates like compound interest.

Our merchants and masters complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price and lessening the sale of goods. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” - Adam Smith

GREAT QUOTES OF THOMAS SOWELL | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 


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GREAT QUOTES OF THOMAS SOWELL


“have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.” - Thomas Sowell

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” - Thomas Sowell

“It’s amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.” - Thomas Sowell

“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.” - Thomas Sowell,

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” - Thomas Sowell

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.” - Thomas Sowell

“The problem isn't that Johnny can't read. The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.” - Thomas Sowell

“Intellect is not wisdom.” - Thomas Sowell

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.” - Thomas Sowell

“Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management.” - Thomas Sowell

“Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it.” - Thomas Sowell

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.” - Thomas Sowell

“Socialism is a wonderful idea. It is only as a reality that it has been disastrous. Among people of every race, color, and creed, all around the world, socialism has led to hunger in countries that used to have surplus food to export.... Nevertheless, for many of those who deal primarily in ideas, socialism remains an attractive idea -- in fact, seductive. Its every failure is explained away as due to the inadequacies of particular leaders.” - Thomas Sowell

GREAT QUOTES OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 


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GREAT QUOTES OF JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES


“When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?” - John Maynard Keynes

“The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.” - John Maynard Keynes

“It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.” - John Maynard Keynes

“If you owe your bank a hundred pounds, you have a problem. But if you owe a million, it has.” - John Maynard Keynes

“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.” - John Maynard Keynes

“Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back” - John Maynard Keynes

“The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts .... He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular, in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must be entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood, as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near to earth as a politician.” - John Maynard Keynes

“The political problem of mankind is to combine three things: economic efficiency, social justice and individual liberty.” - John Maynard Keynes

“Words ought to be a little wild for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.” - John Maynard Keynes

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.” - John Maynard Keynes

“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” - John Maynard Keynes

GREAT QUOTES OF FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 

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GREAT QUOTES OF FRIEDRICH AUGUST VON HAYEK


“From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time” - Friedrich August von Hayek

“Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.” - Friedrich von Hayek

“The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better.” - Friedrich August von Hayek

“If socialists understood economics they wouldn't be socialists.” - Friedrich Hayek

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design.” - F. A. Hayek

“Probably it is true enough that the great majority are rarely capable of thinking independently, that on most questions they accept views which they find ready-made, and that they will be equally content if born or coaxed into one set of beliefs or another. In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance only for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved. It certainly does not justify the presumption of any group of people to claim the right to determine what people ought to think or believe.” - Friedrich August von Hayek

“The more the state "plans" the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.” - Friedrich A. Hayek

“Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy. And an authority directing the whole economic system of the country would be the most powerful monopolist conceivable…it would have complete power to decide what we are to be given and on what terms. It would not only decide what commodities and services were to be available and in what quantities; it would be able to direct their distributions between persons to any degree it liked.” - Friedrich August von Hayek

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.” - Friedrich August von Hayek

“I am certain, however, that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.” - F.A. Hayek

GREAT QUOTES OF MILTON FRIEDMAN | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 

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GREAT QUOTES OF MILTON FRIEDMAN


“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” - Milton Friedman

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” - Milton Friedman

“Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history, are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worse off, worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.” - Milton Friedman

“The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another.” - Milton Friedman

“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” - Milton Friedman

“Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government-- in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost come in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player.” - Milton Friedman

“Now here's somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he's caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it's absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That's the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons” - Milton Friedman

“Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.” - Milton Friedman

“I am favor of cutting taxes under any circumstances and for any excuse, for any reason, whenever it's possible.” - Milton Friedman

“Many people want the government to protect the consumer. A much more urgent problem is to protect the consumer from the government.” - Milton Friedman

GREAT QUOTES OF JOSEPH ALOIS SCHUMPETER | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 

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GREAT QUOTES OF SCHUMPETER


“The first thing a man will do for his ideal is lie” - Joseph Schumpeter

“Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not.” - Joseph Aloïs Schumpeter

“History is a record of "effects" the vast majority of which nobody intended to produce.” - Joseph Schumpeter

“Politicians are like bad horsemen who are so preoccupied with staying in the saddle that they can’t bother about where they’re going.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“In one important sense, Marxism is a religion. To the believer it presents, first, a system of ultimate ends that embody the meaning of life and are absolute standards by which to judge events and actions; and, secondly, a guide to those ends which implies a plan of salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind, or a chosen section of mankind, is to be saved.” - Joseph A. Schumpeter

“This civilization is rapidly passing away, however. Let us rejoice or else lament the fact as much as everyone of us likes; but do not let us shut our eyes to it.” - Joseph Aloïs Schumpeter

“Created by wars that required it, the machine now created the wars it required.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ...” - Joseph A. Schumpeter

“Capitalism Survive?—I have tried to show that a socialist form of society will inevitably emerge from an equally inevitable decomposition of capitalist society.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“Social structures, types and attitudes are coins that do not readily melt. Once they are formed they persist, possibly for centuries, and since different structures and types display different degrees of this ability to survive, we almost always find that actual group and national behavior more or less departs from what we should expect it to be if we tried to infer it from the dominant forms of the productive process.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.” - Joseph A. Schumpeter

“Nothing should be more obvious than that the business organism cannot function according to design when its most important “parameters of action”—wages, prices, interest—are transferred to the political sphere and there dealt with according to the requirements of the political game or, which sometimes is more serious still, according to the ideas of some planners.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“However, whether favorable or unfavorable, value judgments about capitalist performance are of little interest. For mankind is not free to choose. This is not only because the mass of people are not in a position to compare alternatives rationally and always accept what they are being told. There is a much deeper reason for it. Things economic and social move by their own momentum and the ensuing situations compel individuals and groups to behave in certain ways whatever they may wish to do—not indeed by destroying their freedom of choice but by shaping the choosing mentalities and by narrowing the list of possibilities from which to choose.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“The public mind has by now so thoroughly grown out of humor with it as to make condemnation of capitalism and all its works a foregone conclusion---almost a requirement of the etiquette of discussion.” - Joseph A. Schumpeter

“As a matter of practical necessity, socialist democracy may eventually turn out to be more of a sham than capitalist democracy ever was. In any case, that democracy will not mean increased personal freedom.” - Joseph Alois Schumpeter

“We fight for and against not men and things as they are, but for and against the caricatures we make of them.” - Joseph A. Schumpeter

GREAT QUOTES OF LUDWIG VON MISES | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 


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GREAT QUOTES OF LUDWIG VON MISES


“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.” - Ludwig von Mises

“All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.” - Ludwig von Mises

“Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping toward destruction. Therefore, everyone, in his own interests, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle. None can stand aside with unconcern; the interest of everyone hangs on the result. Whether he chooses or not, every man is drawn into the great historical struggle, the decisive battle into which our epoch has plunged us.” - Ludwig Von Mises

“He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.” - Ludwig von Mises

“If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization” - Ludwig von Mises

“Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of the government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments.” - Ludwig Von Mises

“The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.” - Ludwig Von Mises

“Every socialist is a disguised dictator.” - Ludwig von Mises

“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau.” - Ludwig von Mises

“The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.” - Ludwig von Mises

GREAT QUOTES OF ISABEL PATERSON | GREAT QUOTES OF FAMOUS ECONOMISTS

 

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GREAT QUOTES OF ISABEL PATERSON


“A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.” - Isabel Paterson

“Most of the harm in the world is done by good people, and not by accident, lapse, or omission. It is the result of their deliberate actions, long persevered in, which they hold to be motivated by high ideals toward virtuous ends.” - Isabel Paterson

“There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure.” - Isabel Paterson

“Poverty can be brought about by law; it cannot be forbidden by law.” - Isabel Paterson

“The military state is the final form to which every planned economy tends rapidly.” - Isabel Paterson

“A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state...The most vindictive resentment may be expected from the pedagogic profession for any suggestion that they should be dislodged from their dictatorial position; it will be expressed mainly in epithets, such as "reactionary," at the mildest. Nevertheless, the question to put to any teacher moved to such indignation is: Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children to you to pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect your pupils by compulsion?” - Isabel Paterson

“Right now it is a terrible thing to be a rugged individualist; but we don't know what else to be except a feeble nonentity.” - Isabel Paterson

“If everyone were invariably honest, able, wise, and kind, there should be no occasion for government. Everyone would readily understand what is desirable and what is possible in given circumstances, all would concur upon the best means toward their purpose and for equitable participation in the ensuing benefits, and would act without compulsion or default. The maximum production was certainly obtained from such voluntary action arising from personal initiative. But since human beings will sometimes lie, shirk, break promises, fail to improve their faculties, act imprudently, seize by violence the goods of others, and even kill one another in anger or greed, government might be defined as the police organization. In that case, it must be described as a necessary evil. It would have no existence as a separate entity, and no intrinsic authority; it could not be justly empowered to act excepting as individuals infringed one another's rights, when it should enforce prescribed penalties. Generally, it would stand in the relation of a witness to contract, holding a forfeit for the parties. As such, the least practicable measure of government must be the best. Anything beyond the minimum must be oppression.” - Isabel Paterson

“The objection to profit is as if a bystander, observing the planter digging his crop, should say: "You put in only one potato and you are taking out a dozen. You must have taken them away from someone else; those extra potatoes cannot be yours by right." If profit is denounced, it must be assumed that running at a loss is admirable. On the contrary, that is what requires justification. Profit is self-justifying.” - Isabel Paterson

“Trade and money, which go together in a stream of energy, inevitably wash away the enclosing walls of a society of status.” - Isabel Paterson

“In arguing against free enterprise capitalism, the collectivist always adopts the false assumption of a fixed number of jobs in that system. Conversely, in arguing for collectivism, he always assumes that there will be as many jobs as there are workers. The government will make the jobs.” - Isabel Paterson