To start with, anybody who would like the world to be a better place should be able to think like an economist. (Diane Coyle)
In short, what the living wage is really about is not living standards, or even economics, but morality. Its advocates are basically opposed to the idea that wages are a market price--determined by supply and demand, the same as the price of apples or coal. And it is for that reason, rather than the practical details, that the broader political movement of which the demand for a living wage is the leading edge is ultimately doomed to failure: For the amorality of the market economy is part of its essence, and cannot be legislated away. (Paul Krugman)
Another difference between Milton [Friedman] and myself is that everything
reminds Milton of the money supply. Well, everything reminds me of sex, but
I keep it out of the paper.
attributed to Robert Solow
An economist is someone who doesn't know what he's talking about
- and make you feel it's your fault.
An Economist is someone who didn't have enough personality to become
an accountant.
There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him. If he says,
'Yes,' you know he is a crook.
Groucho Marx
The age of chivalry is gone. The age of sophists, economists,
and calculators is upon us; and the glory of Europe is extinguished
forever. Edmund Burke
The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look
respectable
John Kenneth Galbraith
An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.
Alfred A. Knopf
If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)
Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction
listen to weather forecasts and economists?
Kelvin Throop III
An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he
predicted yesterday didn't happen today.
Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988)
An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged
lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living.
Nicholas Chamfort (1741 - 1794)
In all recorded history there has not been one economist who has had
to worry about where the next meal would come from.
Peter Drucker
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds Demand...
Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons. (Woody Allen)
Money can't buy friends, but it buys a better class of enemy. (Spike Milligan)
Money is good for bribing yourself through the inconveniences of life. (Gottfried Reinhardt)
Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn't have it and thought of other things if you did. (James Baldwin)
A fool and his money are soon parted. What I want to know is how they got together in the first place. (BBC's Cyril Fletcher)
Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves. (Proverb)
No one would have remembered the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well. (Margaret Thatcher)
A bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. (Bob Hope)
(from http://www.planware.org/money.htm)
If only God would give me some clear sign! Like making a large deposit
in my name at a Swiss bank.
(Woody Allen, "Without Feathers")
Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently
there must be a beverage.
(Woody Allen "Without Feathers")
What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case,
I definitely overpaid for my carpet.
(Woody Allen)
Not only is there no God, but try getting a plumber on weekends.
(Woody Allen)
When I find out that I am wrong I change my mind...what do you do?
John Maynard Keynes
Over the span of man's history, although a phenomenal amount of education,
persuasion, indoctrination and
incantation have been devoted to the effort, ordinary people have
never been quite persuaded that toil is as
agreeable as its alternatives. Thus to take increased well-being
partly in the form of more goods and partly in the form of more leisure
is unquestionably rational.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The three most important things a man has are briefly, his private
parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
Samuel Butler
If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The
only real security that a man will have in this
world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.
Henry Ford
Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew
hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.
Eric Hoffer
Economics is a theoretical science and as such abstains from any judgement
of value. It is not its task to tell people what ends they should aim at.
It is a science of the means to be applied for attainment of ends chosen,
not, to be sure, a science of the choosing of ends. Ultimate decisions, the
valuations and the choosing of ends, are beyond the scope of any science.
Science never tells a man how he should act; it merely shows how a man
must act if he wants to attain definite ends
Ludwig von Mises
Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.
Andrew Carnegie
The more productive people are, the more governments can tax and confiscate.
So the more productive people are, the more costly it is for governments
to kill them. Evidence indicates that governments respond to this economic
incentive
Gerald W. Scully
You cannot have everything...where would you put it?
Steven Wright
My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income
Errol Flynn
An economist is a person who, when invited to give a talk at a banquet, tells the audience that there's no such a thing as a free lunch
The master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He
must reach a high standard in several different directions and must
combine talents not often found together. 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 ofthe past for the purposes of the future
John Maynard Keynes
Obviousness is always the enemy of correctness.
John Maynard Keynes
Unlike physics, for example, such parts of the bare bones of economic
theory as are expressible in mathematical form are extremely easy compared
with the economic interpretation of the complex and incompletely known facts
of experience, and lead one a very little way towards establishing useful
results.
John Maynard Keynes
I would rather be vaguely right, than precisely wrong.
John Maynard Keynes
Page after page of professional economic journals are filled with
mathematical formulas leading the reader from sets of more or less plausible
but entirely arbitrary assumptions to precisely stated but irrelevant theoretical
conclusions.
Wassily Leontief
It is however always important to remember that the ability to see
things in their correct perspective may be, and often is, divorced from the
ability to reason correctly and vice versa. That is why a man may be a very
good theorist and yet talk absolute nonsense.
Joseph A.Schumpeter
It is universally appreciated, I think, that theorists are able to
tweak their assumptions in order to reach any conclusion they wish. The believability
of the conclusion depends not only on the fact that it was reached but on
how hard the theorist had to tweak the model to get there.
David M. Kreps
It keeps cropping up all over the place. There is an economics of money
and trade, of production and consumption, of distribution and development.
There is also an economics of welfare, manners, language, industry, music,
and art. There is an economics of war and an economics of power. There is
even an economics of love. Economics seems to apply to every nook and cranny
of human experience. It is an aspect of all conscious action. Whenever alternatives
exist, life takes on an economic aspect. It has always been so. But how can
it be? It can be because economics is more than just the most developed of
the sciences of control. It is a way of looking at things, an ordering principle,
a complete part of everything. It is a system of thought, a life game, an
element of pure knowledge.
Robert A. Mundell, a Canadian economist
Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, "on the one hand...on
the other."
Attributed to Harry S. Truman (1884 - 1972) U.S. president.
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made
answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by
economists.
Joan Robinson (1903 - 1983) British economist.
There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble
and the economic ones are incomprehensible. Alec Douglas-Home (1903 -
1995) British prime minister.
You can find me here:
mailto:rmespi@stfx.ca
Roberto Martínez-Espiñeira
Department of Economics
St Francis Xavier University
PO Box 5000, Antigonish
NOVA SCOTIA
CANADA B2G 2W5
Tel: 1-902 867 5443
