Economy Quotes

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By habits of thrift and economy, by way of the industrial school and college, we are coming up. We are crawling up, working up, yea, bursting up-often through oppression, unjust discrimination and prejudice-but through them all we are coming up, and with proper habits, intelligence, and property, there is no power on earth than can permanently stay our progress.

Booker T. Washington

To me, an economy that sees the life of a community or a place as expendable, and reckons its value only in terms of money, is not acceptable because it is not realistic. I am thinking as I believe we must think if we wish to discuss the best uses of people, places, and things, and if we wish to give affection some standing in our thoughts.

If parasitism, favoritism, corruption, and greed for the unearned did not exist, a mixed economy would bring them into existence.

If people could only be taught that economy is a thing of littles and of individuals, and of every day, and not a thing of masses and of spasmodic efforts, then a true idea would begin to tell upon the habits of our domestic life, for the thrift and thriving of the individual is the thrift and thriving of the nation.

Julia McNair Wright

Political economy is the science of free society. Its theory and its history alike establish this position. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and 'Pas trop gouverner' are at war with all kinds of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals and peoples prosper most when governed least.

George Fitzhugh

To balance Fortune by a just expense, Join with Economy, Magnificence.

We don't need more politicians insisting we have deficits because you're not taxed enough. Those deficits ballooned from an economy that didn't grow enough and from 50 years of government spending too much.

The unity of the Middle Ages as a historical period is quite artificial. In reality they fall into three entirely distinct cultural periods—the natural economy of the early Middle Ages; the courtly chivalry of the high Middle Ages; and the urban bourgeois culture of the late Middle Ages. At any rate, the divisions between these three epochs go deeper than those which mark the beginning and the end of the Middle Ages as a whole.

Why do economists persist in modelling the economy with static tools when dynamic ones exist; why do they treat as stationery an entity which is forever changing?

The things you hear now about European unemployment — that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears — are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.

Lawrence Summers

Advertising is the art and sole of capitalism. It captures a moment of time through the lens of commerce, reflecting and affecting our lives, making us laugh and cry, while simultaneously giving traction to the engine that propels this free market economy forward into the future.

Jef I. Richards

In today's knowledge-based economy, what you earn depends on what you learn. Jobs in the information technology sector, for example, pay 85 percent more than the private sector average.

Power that controls the economy should be in the hands of elected representatives of the people instead of an industrial oligarchy

William O. Douglas

Europeans were anxious to acquire gold in Africa because there was a pressing need for gold coin within the growing capitalist money economy.

Populism is at its essence [...] just determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. [...] One big difference between real populism and what the Tea Party thing is, is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, let's get rid of government. You need to be saying let's take over government.

Nineteenth-century civilization rested on four institutions. The first was the balance-of-power system which for a century prevented the occurrence of any long and devastating war between the Great Powers. The second was the international gold standard which symbolized a unique organization of world economy. The third was the self-regulating market which produced an unheard-of material welfare. The fourth was the liberal state. Classified in one way, two of these institutions were economic, two political. Classified in another way, two of them were national, two international. Between them they determined the characteristic outlines of the history of our civilization.

Economic liberalisation is a world phenomenon. Socialist countries, capitalist countries, all of them, have to take to liberalisation. The liberalisation took place first in Britain, then in the United States under President Reagan, these were not liberalising from a socialist system. I think it is because of the stage of economy which the world has reached at present and the stage of technology. At every historical and technological and economic age there are policies which would be suitable for that period and countries. We have to adopt policies, dictated by the circumstances and the necessities of the time.

K. R. Narayanan

The world will not end. This is ridiculous. I think it's like 2000. It's a great trick to do business and earn lots of money because stupid people hoard things. This is a stimulator of the economy.

What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear.

J. F. C. Fuller

Not only is it possible to devise complete models of the economy on hypotheses other than rationality, but in fact virtually every practical theory of macroeconomics is partly so based. The price- and wage- rigidity elements of Keynesian theory are hard to fit into a rational framework, though some valiant efforts have been made. … But if the Keynesian model is a natural target of criticism by the upholders of universal rationality, it must be added that monetarism is no better. I know of no serious derivation of the demand for money from a rational optimization. … The use of rationality in these arguments is ritualistic, not essential.

In an economy where the only certainty is uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge.

Labor's message then is this: we believe in a strong economy; we believe also in a fair go for all, not just for some.

If an economy is to sustain progress, it must satisfy the basic principles of ecology. If it does not, it will decline and eventually collapse. There is no middle ground

Lester R. Brown

Standard economists don't seem to understand exponential growth. Ecological economics recognizes that the economy, like any other subsystem on the planet, cannot grow forever. And if you think of an organism as an analogy, organisms grow for a period and then they stop growing. They can still continue to improve and develop, but without physically growing, because if organisms did that you'd end up with nine-billion-ton hamsters. There is a great video on this.

Robert Costanza

Avoid fragmentation: Find your focus and seek simplicity. Purposeful living calls for elegant efficiency and economy of effort-expanding the minimum time and energy necessary to achieve desired goals.