Joan Robinson - Economic Philosophy (1962)

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We make a great fuss about national conscience, but it consists mainly in insisting upon everyone ascribing our national policy to highly moral motives, rather than in examining what our motives really are.

Joan Robinson
Progress is slow partly from mere intellectual inertia. In a subject where there is no agreed procedure for knocking out errors, doctrines have a long life. A professor teaches what he was taught, and his pupils, with a proper respect and reverence for teachers, set up a resistance against his critics for no other reason than that it was he whose pupils they were.

Joan Robinson
It is the business of economists, not to tell us what to do, but show why what we are doing anyway is in accord with proper principles.

Joan Robinson
The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.

Joan Robinson
The very nature of economics is rooted in nationalism.... It [was] developed... in the hope of throwing light upon questions of policy. But policy means nothing unless there is an authority to carry it out, and authorities are national.

Joan Robinson
Science progresses by trial and error, and when it is forbidden to admit error there can be no progress.

Joan Robinson
Utility is a metaphysical concept of impregnable circularity; utility is the quality in commodities that makes individuals want to buy them, and the fact that individuals want to buy commodities shows that they have utility.

Joan Robinson
Economics limps along with one foot in untested hypotheses and the other in untestable slogans.

Joan Robinson