Lawrence Summers Quotes

The United States basically accepted protection abroad as the price of post-war recovery. Now, that these countries have caught up to our level of prosperity, it is time for them to catch up to our level of openness.

The major challenge for the United States is whether it can become the first outward-looking, continental, nonimperialist power in history.

Investment in girls' education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.

You can't have a situation in which companies proceed on a permanent basis relying only on cash from the government.

I promise you that there are a lot of people involved in various kinds of retail activities who think they have a crucial role in the economy, and they're right.

It was wrong to allow Stalin to shape the European landscape of the 20th century. It would be even more wrong to let him shape the landscape of the 21st century.

As long as we keep our fundamentals strong ... the dollar (and) U.S. borrowing costs will do just fine.

With uncertainty in oil markets, a buildup of speculative pressures and the large U.S. current account deficit, there is a real possibility that Paulson's crisis-management skills will be tested.

Deflation and secular stagnation are the risks of our time.

Takeovers wouldn't cause the stock market to rise unless there is an upward reassessment of earnings (potential). People are more optimistic and confident about the future.

In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.

Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular.

A good rule of thumb for many things in life holds that things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then happen faster than you thought they could.

We are inheriting the worst financial system since the Depression. We're inheriting a situation - when people go back and study major banking crises a quarter century from now, the one that America developed in 2007 and 2008 is going to be one of those crises.

It says something about this new global economy that USA Today now reports every morning on the day's events in Asian markets.

The idea that we should be open to all ideas, is very different from the supposition that all ideas are equally valid.

Start with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient.

The only antidote to dangerous ideas is strong alternatives vigorously advocated.

I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to it.

When I look out the window at my backyard, I can't think of anything interesting to ask. I mean, it's green, it's growing-but nothing occurs to me that any concentrated effort of thought could possibly enlighten. Whereas in economic, statistical, or mathematical kinds of things, I can think lots of questions.

One of those disturbing tendencies in academic life is that there is a desire on the part of many in the name of open-mindedness to fall into a kind of relativistic denialism in which all positions are equally legitimate, all positions must be respected, and compromise must be entered into no matter what the starting point or reasonableness of the two parties.

But ultimately what I was impressed by during my years in government was how much the intellectual climate and the prevailing intellectual notions constrained and represented the universe within which the discourse took place.

Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging more migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs (lesser developed countries)? I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that ... I've always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly under polluted; their air quality is vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City.

It used to be said that when the U.S. sneezed, the world caught a cold. The opposite is equally true today.