Basic Economics Quotes

Many of my students assume that government protection is the only thing ensuring decent wages for most American workers. But basic economics shows that competition between employers for workers can be very effective at preventing businesses from misbehaving. ~ Christina Romer

Most Americans don't know enough about basic economics to fill out one fortune cookie. ~ Neal Boortz

The entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don't you know anything about basic economics? ~ Brandon Sanderson

One of the many signs of verbal virtuosity among intellectuals is the repackaging of words to mean things that are not only different from, but sometimes the direct opposite of, their original meanings. 'Freedom' and 'power' are among the most common of these repackaged words. The basic concept of freedom as not being subjected to other people's restrictions, and of power as the ability to restrict other people's options have both been stood on their heads in some of the repackaging of these words by intellectuals discussing economic issues. Thus business enterprises who expand the public's options, either quantitatively (through lower prices) or qualitatively (through better products) are often spoken of as 'controlling' the market, whenever this results in a high percentage of consumers choosing to purchase their particular products rather than the competing products of other enterprises.

In other words, when consumers decide that particular brands of products are either cheaper or better than competing brands of those products, third parties take it upon themselves to depict those who produced these particular brands as having exercised 'power' or 'control.' If, at a given time, three-quarters of the consumers prefer to buy the Acme brand of widgets to any other brand, then Acme Inc. will be said to 'control' three-quarters of the market, even though consumers control 100 percent of the market, since they can switch to another brand of widgets tomorrow if someon ~ Thomas Sowell

Basic Economics 101. It's the most complicated simple subject there is. ~ Rush Limbaugh

The use of force is easy to rationalize in terms of basic economics. 'We should make them PAY for what they've done!' It's just the law of demand: raise the price of crossing us, and fewer people will cross us. Make the price another Hiroshima, and perhaps the quantity demanded will fall to zero. ~ Bryan Caplan

There is a basic law that like attracts like. Negative thinking definitely attracts negative results. Conversely, if a person habitually thinks optimistically and hopefully, his positive thinking sets in motion creative forces - and success instead of eluding him flows toward him. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

It is amazing, the number of business executives and senior leaders who get to be appointed and elevated to positions of authority on the basis of technical competences whilst lacking essential grooming on basic good manners and customs of conduct that must come from the home training process. ~ Archibald Marwizi

Experience shows that Being is the essential, basic nature of the mind; but, since It commonly remains in tune with the senses projecting outwards toward the manifested realms of creation, the mind misses or fails to appreciate its own essential nature, just as the eyes are unable to see themselves. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

Interestingly, human irrationality is a hot topic in economics at the moment. Behavioural economics it's called, on the cusp of economics and psychology. ~ Evan Davis

The agents of etatism have certainly not been lacking in zeal and energy. But, for all this, economic affairs cannot be kept going by magistrates and policemen. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Economics is the continuation of energy/resources by other means. ~ Michael Ruppert

The brain-disease model overlooks four fundamental truths: (1) our capacity to destroy one another is matched by our capacity to heal one another. Restoring relationships and community is central to restoring well-being; (2) language gives us the power to change ourselves and others by communicating our experiences, helping us to define what we know, and finding a common sense of meaning; (3) we have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving, and touching; and (4) we can change social conditions to create environments in which children and adults can feel safe and where they can thrive. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

The basic fear with love is that love is larger than ourselves. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Dementia resembles delirium in the same way an ultra-marathon resembles a dash across the street. Same basic components, vastly different scale. If you've run delirium's course once or twice in your life, try to imagine a version that never ends. ~ Floyd Skloot

This column was an attempt to convey to British readers something of the flavor of high-school graduation, a ritual largely unknown across the Atlantic and one at odds with the basic organizing principle of English education: The continual assurances by commencement speakers that yours is the most awesome generation ever to walk the earth ring a little odd if you're a survivor of some grim Dotheboys Hall where the prevailing educational philosophy was to lower your self-esteem to undetectable levels by the end of the first week. ~ Mark Steyn

A clear enunciation of these rights needs to be enshrined in the constitution to guarantee that this basic right of law-abiding gun owners and sportsmen shall not be infringed upon by anti-gun public officials. ~ Charlton Heston

An environment of infinite economic expansion is unsustainable in a world of finite resources. ~ Bryant McGill

You can buy a person's hands but you can't buy his heart. His heart is where his enthusiasm, his loyalty is. ~ Stephen Covey

That's the spirit, kid," said the voice of the grown man. "Come on, Snow Scouts, let's all say the Snow Scout Alphabet Pledge together."
Instantly the cave echoed with the sound of many voices speaking in perfect unison, a phrase here which means "reciting a list of very odd words at the very same time." "Snow Scouts," recited the Snow Scouts, "are accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantines, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered - every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long! ~ Lemony Snicket

It was mid-November 2008. There were pirates taking ships with impunity in African waters, terrorists punching holes in Indian security, China sinking towards depression because Americans were afraid to buy cheap goods for Christmas, and the richest nation in the history of the world was talking about how to keep a budget. ~ Walter Mosley

In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology:

'Orwell belonged to the category of writers who write.' And could afford to write, they might have added. In contrast they speak of George Garrett, whom Orwell met in Liverpool, a gifted writer, seaman, dockworker, Communist militant, 'the plain facts of [whose] situation - on the dole, married and with kids, the family crowded into two rooms - made it impossible for him to attempt any extended piece of writing.' Orwell's writing life then was from the start an affirmation of unexamined bourgeois values.

This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writing - under the name Matt Lowe - for John Middleton Murry's Adelphi. As he told his diary:

I urged him to write his autobiography, but as usual, living in about two rooms on the dole with a wife (who I gather objects to his writing) and a number of kids, he finds it impossible to settle to any long work and can only do short stories. Apart from the enormous unemployment in Liverpool, it is almost impossible for him to get work because he is blacklisted everywhere as a Communist.

Thus the evidence that supposedly shames Orwell by contrast is in fact supplied by - none other than Orwe ~ Christopher Hitchens

I thought there might be some grand design I did not understand, but the government's policy clearly was not working, because India was still poor. I was determined to learn more, so I became interested in economics. This book is another unintended consequence of the government's policies. ~ Raghuram G. Rajan

It is this, at its most basic, that makes science a humane pursuit; it acknowledges the commonality of people's experience. ~ John Charles Polanyi

When an economist says the evidence is "mixed," he or she means that theory says one thing and data says the opposite. ~ Richard Thaler

We extend our best wishes to you, inhabitants of another world.

After reading the following message, you should have a basic understanding of civilization on Earth. By dint of long toil and creativity, the human race has built a splendid civilization, blossoming with a multitude of diverse cultures. We have also begun to understand the laws governing the natural world and the development of human societies. We cherish all that we have accomplished.

But our world is still flawed. Hate exists, as does prejudice and war. Because of conflicts between the forces of production and the relations of production, wealth distribution is extremely uneven, and large portions of humanity live in poverty and misery.

Human societies are working hard to resolve the difficulties and problems they face, striving to create a better future for Earth civilization.The country that sent this message is engaged in this effort. We are dedicated to building an ideal society, where the labor and value of every member of the human race are fully respected, where everyone's material and spiritual needs are fully met, so that civilization on Earth may become more perfect.

With the best of intentions, we look forward to establishing contact with other civilized societies in the universe. We look forward to working together with you to build a better life in this vast universe. ~ Liu Cixin

When you're trying to lose weight, one of the most important things you can do is eat three decent meals a day so that you're not so hungry that you can't get food off your mind. Habit and hunger have long been the basic, insidious enemies of the overweight. We can't fight hunger, but we can fight habit. ~ Jean Nidetch

The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer - the romantic - asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening') it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is 'normal,' that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women. ~ Adrienne Rich

It's a Cyprus of misery and soup kitchens and a state which cannot meet basic obligations. It can only cause me grief. ~ Nicos Anastasiades

Unless we realize that the essence of Nazism is also an attempt to solve a universal problem of Western civilization - that of the industrial society - and that the basic principles on which the Nazis base this attempt are also in no way confined to Germany, we do not know what we fight for or what we fight against ... The war is being fought for the structure of industrial society
its basic principles, its purposes, and its institutions. ~ Peter Drucker

Negative personal attacks have no place in public life and serve to erode public confidence in our basic institutions of government. ~ Mike Pence

Probably, the nature of homophobia will never be widely interrogated, while we will continue to be excluded from school curricula, subjected to vicious media distortions, or entirely ignored, denied basic civil rights while our demands are ridiculed and derided. But in the midst of all this only one thing has changed for certain. We have changed. We will never go back into the closet. ~ Sarah Schulman

Every form of government tends to perish by excess of its basic principle. ~ Will Durant

If I say, "I am a monk." or "I am a Buddhist," these are, in comparison to my nature as a human being, temporary. To be human is basic. ~ Dalai Lama

Even if you don't mind Romneycare, or the abortion flip-flop, or any of the rest, there's a more basic problem: He's not a natural campaigner, and on the stump he instinctively recoils from any personal connection with the voters. ~ Mark Steyn

As these contrasts show, capitalism has undergone enormous changes in the last two and a half centuries. While some of Smith's basic principles remain valid, they do so only at very general levels.
For example, competition among profit-seeking firms may still be the key driving force of capitalism, as in Smith's scheme. But it is not between small, anonymous firms which, accepting consumer tastes, fight it out by increasing the efficiency in the use of given technology. Today, competition is among huge multinational companies, with the ability not only to influence prices but to redefine technologies in a short span of time (think about the battle between Apple and Samsung) and to manipulate consumer tastes through brand-image building and advertising. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

Protectionism is the institutionalization of economic failure. ~ Edward Heath

The courageous testimony of Dr. Faust that a maiden's smile is more precious than history, philosophy, education, religion, law, politics,economics, and all the other branches of learning. Learning is another name for vanity. It is the effort of human beings not to be human beings. ~ Osamu Dazai

A sure sign of a crisis is the prevalence of cranks. It is characteristic of a crisis in theory that cranks get a hearing from the public which orthodoxy is failing to satisfy. ~ Joan Robinson

I've seen so many people - loved ones and colleagues - who jump from one diet to the next, one exercise regimen to the next . I was trying to figure out what were some of the basic things that each of us can build into a lifestyle for good, instead of bouncing from one thing to the next. ~ Tom Rath