Gunnar Myrdal Quotes

It is no accident that the Victorian age, the heyday of conventionalism, was the cultural bloom of economic liberalism.

Sometimes it looks as if, the better off they [nations] become, the bigger do they conceive the gap between what is actually their lot and what would be desirable, while in the poor countries large masses of people seem to be satisfied by merely surviving.

During the three decades of its existence, the effectiveness of the United Nations has, on the whole, tended to decrease, particularly in the field of peace and security and, more generally, all issues in which the developed countries feel they have important stakes.

The Negro problem, like all other political problems, is fundamentally a moral issue. This is realism, not idealism. Those of my colleagues who believe that they are particularly 'hard boiled' because they overlook the fact that human beings are struggling for their consciences are simply unrealistic.

Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.

The big majority of Americans, who are comparatively well-off, have developed an ability to have enclaves of people living in the greatest misery almost without noticing them.

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it.

In my family, we don't die till we're 100 years old.

I am often considered almost not a part of the profession of Establishment economists. I am even referred to as a sociologist. And by that, economists usually do not mean anything flattering.

America is the one rich country with the biggest slums, the least democratic and least developed health system, and the most niggardly attitude against its old people.

In society, liberty for one may mean the suppression of liberty for others.

People don't realize the great happiness there is in living to be very old and together all the time.

To the great majority of white Americans, the Negro problem has distinctly negative connotations. It suggests something difficult to settle and equally difficult to leave alone. It is embarrassing. It makes for moral uneasiness.

In most circles, the idea of economic planning has been in disrepute most of the time and, particularly in America, has almost carried connotations of intellectual and moral perversion and even political subversion.

Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by Governments lacking courage and vision.

So many social changes are as irreversible as the reaction when sodium is thrown into water.

Compared with members of other nations of Western civilization, the ordinary American is a rationalistic being, and there are close relations between his moralism and his rationalism. Even romanticism, transcendentalism, and mysticism tend to be, in the American culture, rational, pragmatic and optimistic.

People become less inhibited from wanting to change social and economic conditions in a radical fashion according to their own interests, and from being prepared to think of state intervention in ever wider spheres as possible and useful for this purpose.

America is conservative in fundamental principles ... but the principles conserved are liberal and some, indeed, are radical.

Planned parenthood in the social history of the Western countries is, indeed, a phenomenon instrin-sically related to those very changes in peoples attitudes which, on the political plane, have been causing the trend towards economic planning.

As a forecaster, Marx shared the common destiny of all prophets: to be belied by events.

It is natural for the ordinary American when he sees something wrong to feel not only that there should be a law against it but, also that an organization should be formed to combat it.