Kenneth Arrow - The limits of organization (1974)

8 Sourced Quotes

View all Kenneth Arrow Quotes
Trust is an important lubricant of a social system. It is extremely efficient; it saves a lot of trouble to have a fair degree of reliance on other people's word. Unfortunately this is not a commodity which can be bought very easily. If you have to buy it, you already have some doubts about what you have bought.

Kenneth Arrow
There are many other organizations beside the government and the firm. But all of them, whether political party or revolutionary movement, university or church, share the common characteristics of the need for collective action and the allocation of resources through nonmarket methods.

Kenneth Arrow
Collective action is a means of power, a means by which individuals can more fully realize their individual values.

Kenneth Arrow
It is this thinking which I think gives rise to the greatest tragedies of history, this sense of commitment to a past purpose which reinforces the original agreement precisely at a time when experience has shown that it must be reversed.

Kenneth Arrow
As is by now well known, attempts to form social judgments by aggregating individual expressed preferences always lead to the possibility of paradox.

Kenneth Arrow
Uncertainty means that we do not have a complete description of the world which we fully believe to be true.

Kenneth Arrow
The purpose of organizations is to exploit the fact that many (virtually all) decisions require the participation of many individuals for their effectiveness.

Kenneth Arrow
In eras when authority or at least specific authorities have been questioned, there is more tendency to examine the roots of and the need for authority. The owl of Minerva flies not in the dusk but in the storm.

Kenneth Arrow