Economics Philosopy Quotes

If you look at mainstream economics there are three things you will not find in a mainstream economic model - Banks, Debt, and Money.
How anybody can think they can analyze capital while leaving out Banks, Debt, and Money is a bit to me like an ornithologist trying to work out how a bird flies whilst ignoring that the bird has wings ... ~ Steve Keen

And with the Occupy Movement, it's really ironic how the police come as representatives and enforcers of the powers that be, even though the people in the Occupy Movement are really on their side - not in terms of their behavior, but in terms of their economic status, in terms of who the police are in society and how much they're paid, and if you boil it down to the economics of it, the police should be out there marching with the Occupy Movement. ~ Oren Moverman

An item is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it ~ Bianca Baker

Wherever the shadow of economic growth touches us, we are left useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption...We lose sight of our resources, lose control over the environmental conditions which make these resources applicable, lose taste for self-reliant coping with challenges from without and anxiety from within. ~ Ivan Illich

No man can rightfully be required to join, or support, an association whose protection he does not desire. ~ Lysander Spooner

I am practical by nature, and I'd heard that being a writer or an artist is a good way to starve! So I was an economics major at Oklahoma State, and then received an M.S. from Cornell in Agricultural Resource and Managerial Economics. I knew if I wanted to write I would do it on my own, but I knew I wouldn't make myself study economics on my own. ~ Ally Carter

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal. ~ Mark Helprin

It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better. ~ John Ruskin

We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics. We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions-if they are to be moral-is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success. ~ Vaclav Havel

What then is the intellectual advantage of civilization over primitive savagery? It is not necessarily that each civilized man has more knowledge but that he requires far less. ~ Thomas Sowell

You should not forget that without all the work in law and economics, a great part of which has been supported by the John M. Olin Foundation, it is doubtful whether the importance of my work would have been recognized. ~ Ronald Coase

Arguing that the only problem with a free market is lack of competition, is like arguing that that the only problem with prostitution is that there aren't enough pimps. ~ Quentin R. Bufogle

Economics as currently presented in textbooks and taught in the classroom does not have much to do with business management, and still less with entrepreneurship. ~ Ronald Coase

The economics favour one-man comedy shows: all you need is one person, a microphone and a PA system. But I'm pleased so many people are making a living out of comedy - it's a wonderful business to be in. ~ Paul Merton

I started to read as obsessively about Star Wars as I once did about Kant - and still do about behavioral economics and behavioral psychology. ~ Cass Sunstein

Businesses are great structures for managing big projects. It's like trying to develop the ability to walk without developing a skeleton. Once in a blue moon, you get an octopus, but for the most part, you get skeletons. Skeletons are good shit. ~ Cory Doctorow

On one project I was hanging out with Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, and Steve Carrel, and Christian Bale, and trying to explain economics to them for a movie I'm an advisor on. ~ David Plotz

We can't build a safer world with honorable intentions and good will alone. Achieving the fundamental goals our nation seeks in world affairs - peace, human rights, economics progress national independence and international stability - means supporting our friends and defending our interests. ~ Ronald Reagan

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first. ~ Wendell Berry

In an advanced industrial society it becomes almost impossible to seek, even to imagine, unemployment as a condition for autonomous, useful work. The infrastructure of society is arranged so that only the job gives access to the tools of production...Housework, handicrafts, subsistence agriculture, radical technology, learning exchanges, and the like are degraded into activities for the idle, the unproductive, the very poor, or the very rich. A society that fosters intense dependence on commodities thus turns its unemployed into either its poor or its dependents. ~ Ivan Illich

it (government) can't run out of dollars any more than a carpenter can run out of inches. ~ Stephanie Kelton

It is distressing how often one can guess the answer given to an economic question merely by knowing who asks it. ~ George Stigler

I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated. ~ John McCain

Even professors of economics, to say nothing of the public, do not generally have scientific minds. ~ Frank Knight

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multitasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed - some mechanism or myth that encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where "the long term" is measured at least in centuries. ~ Stewart Brand

In a world where profit is consistently put before both people and the planet, climate economics has everything to do with ethics and morality. ~ Naomi Klein

Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless son has happened to break a pane of glass? If you have been present at such a scene, you will most assuredly bear witness to the fact that every one of the spectators, were there even thirty of them, by common consent apparently, offered the unfortunate owner this invariable consolation – "It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. Everybody must live, and what would become of the glaziers if panes of glass were never broken?"

Now, this form of condolence contains an entire theory, which it will be well to show up in this simple case, seeing that it is precisely the same as that which, unhappily, regulates the greater part of our economical institutions.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage, and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined ~ Frederic Bastiat

The technical developments of almost every form of wealth [e.g., oil, minerals] are the forebears of Big Business; and Big Business, directly or indirectly, is the immediate cause of War. ~ Aleister Crowley

As capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer must grow worse. ~ Karl Marx

So what were your favorite subjects in school?"
"School?" He leaned back in his chair as though he needed the extra space to think about it. "Probably math. It always made sense. Unlike English, economics, and girls."
"And exactly how do you plan on taking over the free world if you don't understand economics?"
"I'll hire advisers. I'll hire you, in fact."
"Okay. Let me know when your army of junior high zombies is ready. ~ Janette Rallison

One nanny said, "Feed a cold"; she was a neo-Keynesian. Another nanny said, "Starve a cold"; she was a monetarist. ~ Harold Macmillan

I am sometimes asked, "How do you know there won't be a war tomorrow (or a genocide, or an act of terrorism) that will refute your whole thesis?" The question misses the point of this book. The point is not that we have entered an Age of Aquarius in which every last earthling has been pacified forever. It is that substantial reductions in violence have taken place, and it is important to understand them. Declines in violence are caused by political, economic, and ideological conditions that take hold in particular cultures at particular times. If the conditions reverse, violence could go right back up. ~ Steven Pinker

So why study history? Unlike physics or economics, history is not a means for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we imagine. For example, studying how Europeans came to dominate Africans enables us to realise that there is nothing natural or inevitable about the racial hierarchy, and that the world might well be arranged differently. 2. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

It is true that from a behavioral economics perspective we are fallible, easily confused, not that smart, and often irrational. We are more like Homer Simpson than Superman. So from this perspective it is rather depressing. But at the same time there is also a silver lining. There are free lunches! ~ Dan Ariely

Personally, I don't see old economics and behavioural economics as opposed. It is useful to assume people are rational as a good approximation to their long term behaviour, but it would be unwise not to think how in practice their behaviour may deviate from that simplifying assumption. ~ Evan Davis

My hunch is that as the importance of a decision grows, the tendency to rely on quantitative analyses done by others tends to shrink. When the championship or the future of the company is on the line, managers tend to rely on their gut instincts. ~ Richard H. Thaler

Every three or four years I pick a new subject. It may be Japanese art; it may be economics. Three years of study are by no means enough to master a subject but they are enough to understand it. SO for more than 60 years I have kept studying one subject at a time. ~ Peter Drucker

It's a fundamental aspect of the free enterprise system and economics: If there's no penalty associated with increased costs, why not lay on increased costs? ~ John McCain

Transformation begins with the individual Dr William Edwards Deming
The New Economics - 1993 ~ Priyavrat Thareja

Here is a principle to use in all aspects of economics and policy. When you find a good or service that is in huge demand but the supply is so limited to the point that the price goes up and up, look for the regulation that is causing it. This applies regardless of the sector, whether transportation, gas, education, food, beer, or daycare. There is something in the way that is preventing the market from working as it should. If you look carefully enough, you will find the hand of the state making the mess in question. ~ Jeffrey Tucker

[Economics] is all about observing the world with genuine curiosity and admitting that it is full of mysteries ~ Steven E. Landsburg

Even though I didn't get a business degree, I enjoyed learning about economics. ~ Herb Ritts