Quotessence
Home / Topics / Economics Quotes

Economics Quotes

Browse 2895 quotes about Economics.

Related topics

PeopleBusinessIfsPoliticalEconomyLibertyManagementWorldPhilosophyMenThinkingGovernmentWayEconomistHumansKnowsWantShouldLibertarianProblemMeanWellsLawStatesCapitalismInterestMayNeedsPoliticsYearsBelieveFactsFirstsCountrySocialStudyIndividualLibertarianismHas BeensDoeTaxesTheoryIdeasLongRealWealthResourcesTodayPolicyTwoUseImportantEnvironmentInvestingMadeMatterMoneySubjectsWarGivingOrderResultsSocialismTermValuesWholeClassEndsPayPrinciplesHelpingIgnoranceLooksNationsPoorFinanceGrowthIssuesReasonAmericaDebtLittlesMoralArtCompanyCostCoursesFormHardJobsModernSelfTryingBookEconomy And EconomicsEnoughEthicsFundamentalsKindProcessmore

Economics Quotes

“Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace.”

WayTwoStatesUseIndividualLibertyMillionsEconomicModernActivityEconomicsArmyLibertarianTechniqueCooperationLibertarianismFree MarketMarketplaceCoercionTwo WaysInvolvingIndividual LibertyTotalitarian StateCoordinating
Book:Milton Friedman on Freedom: Selections from The Collected Works of Milton Friedman
Create image

“The national budget must be balanced. The public debt must be reduced; the arrogance of the authorities must be moderated and controlled. Payments to foreign governments must be reduced. If the nation doesn't want to go bankrupt, people must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.”

PeopleIfsWantGovernmentNationsLibertyAuthorityEconomicsDebtLibertarianBudgetsArroganceControlledLibertarianismBalancedAssistancePaymentLiving OnNational Debt
Author:Taylor Caldwell
Create image

“America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.”

MenAmericaInterestCommonLibertySacrificeGeniusEconomicsFortuneLibertarianAbundanceProductiveLibertarianismFree MarketPursuedFree ManCommon GoodIndustrializationPersonal InterestFree Market CapitalismPolitics And Economics
Book:Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
Create image

“The high rate of unemployment among teenagers, and especially black teenagers, is both a scandal and a serious source of social unrest. Yet it is largely a result of minimum wage laws. We regard the minimum wage law as one of the most, if not the most, anti-black laws on the statute books.”

IfsBookLawSocialBlackResultsLibertySeriousSourceEconomicsRegardRateLibertarianTeenagerLibertarianismMinimumUnemploymentScandalMinimum WageUnrestStatutesSocial Unrest
Author:Milton Friedman
Create image

“It's no accident that capitalism has brought with it progress, not merely in production but also in knowledge. Egoism and competition are, alas, stronger forces than public spirit and sense of duty.”

SpiritForceLibertyProgressDutyCapitalismEconomicsStrongerCompetitionProductionsAccidentsLibertarianLibertarianismAlasEgoism
Book:The Albert Einstein Collection: Essays in Humanism, The Theory of Relativity, and The World As I See It
Create image

“People who create things nowadays can expect to be prosecuted by highly moralistic people who are incapable of creating anything. There is no way to measure the chilling effect on innovation that results from the threats of taxation, regulation and prosecution against anything that succeeds. We'll never know how many ideas our government has aborted in the name protecting us.”

PeopleKnowsWayIdeasGovernmentNamesResultsLibertyKnow HowEffectsSucceedCreatingEconomicsInnovationThreatLibertarianRegulationLibertarianismIncapableTaxationChillProsecution
Author:Joseph Sobran
Create image

“The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters. And that's beginning to happen. More than six decades of hard work for American liberty beginning with the Old Right opposition to the Roosevelt Revolution and continuing with the Mises Institute, is beginning to bear fruit.”

HardStatesHappensLawTurnsLibertyForeverHard WorkRevolutionGoes OnBearsLimitsSixEconomicsFruitLibertarianDecadesOppositionLibertarianismContinuingExpansionTurn-onInstituteAmerican Liberty
Author:Llewellyn Rockwell
Create image

“If politicians were serious about day care for children, instead of just sloganizing about it, nothing they could do would improve the quality of child care more than by lifting the heavy burden of taxation that forces so many families to have both parents working.”

IfsChildrenCareForceParentQualityLibertySeriousPoliticianEconomicsBurdenHeavyLibertarianLibertarianismTaxationLiftingChild CareHeavy BurdensDay Care
Book:Controversial Essays
Create image

“Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family; the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds.”

YoungSocialParentLibertySupportSecurityDutyEconomicsLibertarianLibertarianismSocial SecurityCompulsionTransfersCompulsory
Book:Bright Promises, Dismal Performance: An Economist's Protest
Create image

“The fact throughout history is that whenever government dominates the economic affairs of its citizenry, a free society is eroded, then destroyed, and a minority government ensues. Personal liberty without economic liberty is an absolute contradiction; the one cannot exist without the other.”

FactsGovernmentLibertyEconomicEconomicsAbsolutesAffairLibertarianDestroyedContradictionMinoritiesLibertarianismFree SocietyCitizenryPersonal LibertyMinority Government
Author:William E. Simon
Create image

“Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences.”

PeopleDoeMadeCountryFactsSeemsSocialPoorLibertyGoneNiceConditionsPolicyConsequenceEconomicsLibertarianWelfareGenerousCompassionateReceivingLibertarianismPoor PeoplePaymentAnd OffPlaces To LiveSocial Policy
Book:Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea
Create image

“Conservatives and liberals are kindred spirits as far as government spending is concerned. First, let's make sure we understand what government spending is. Since government has no resources of its own, and since there's no Tooth Fairy handing Congress the funds for the programs it enacts, we are forced to recognize that government spending is no less than the confiscation of one person's property to give it to another to whom it does not belong - in effect, legalized theft.”

GivingFirstsPersonsDoeGovernmentSpiritLibertyEffectsResourcesConcernedProgramEconomicsPropertyCongressSpendingLibertarianTeethFairyFundLibertarianismTheftKindredGovernment ProgramsGovernment SpendingTooth FairyKindred Spirit
Author:Walter E. Williams
Create image

“Ever since its founding in 1913, the Fed has described itself as an "independent" agency operated by selfless public servants striving to "fine-tune" the economy through monetary policy. In reality, however, a non-political governmental institution is as likely as a barking cat.”

RealityPoliticalLibertyEconomyPolicyFineEconomicsCatIndependentInstitutionsStriveLibertarianServantAgencyTunesFedsSelflessLibertarianismFoundingMonetaryPublic ServantsMonetary PolicyNon Political
Author:Thomas DiLorenzo
Create image

“According to the Tax Foundation, taxes now consume more than 38% of the average family's budget. That is more than is spent on food, clothing, housing, and transportation combined. Compare this to the plight of medieval serfs. They only had to give the lord of the manor one-third of their output - and they were considered slaves. So what does that make us?”

GivingDoeLibertyLordTaxesEconomicsThirdsFoundationSlaveAverageLibertarianCompareBudgetsClothingsLibertarianismHousingMedievalTransportationOutputPlightSerfs
Author:Daniel J. Mitchell
Create image

“I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds ... I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”

FeelsLibertyPlansEconomicsConstitutionLibertarianFundSentimentsApprovalLibertarianismObligedIndulgeCharitableBenevolentIndulge InWarrantsAppropriation
Book:Grover Cleveland, 1837-1908: chronology, documents, bibliographical aids
Create image

“Our popular economics writers, however, are not in the business of giving their readers a ringside seat on the research action; with no exception I can think of, they use their books to do an end run around the normal structure of scholarship, to preach ideas that few serious economists share. Often, these ideas are not just at odds with the professional consensus; they are demonstrably wrong, and sometimes terminally silly. But they sound good to the unwary reader.”

ThinkingGivingI CanBookIdeasEndsSometimesUseRunningActionSoundShareSeriousReaderNormalResearchEconomicsStructureLibertarianSillySeatsExceptionOddsEconomistConsensusScholarship
Author:Paul Krugman
Create image

“A favorite Wired icon for the information feedback loop, a dragon curling in a circle to swallow its own tail, could become more apt as a symbol of the timeless libertarian paradox: Monopoly verging on feudalism emerges from unregulated competition to bite libertarianism in the posterior.”

InformationEconomicsCompetitionLibertarianCirclesSymbolsDragonsCyclesParadoxBitesLibertarianismTailsTimelessFeedbackMonopolyEmergingIconsVergeLoopsSwallowingFeudalismVicious Cycles
Author:Jedediah Purdy
Create image

“At George Mason University I saw Hoppe present a lecture in which he claimed that Ludwig von Mises had set the intellectual foundation for not only economics, but for ethics, geometry, and optics, as well. This bizarre claim turned a serious scholar and profound thinker into a comical cult figure, a sort of Euro Kim Il Sung.”

WellsSawsFiguresSeriousIntellectualEthicsEconomicsClaimsFoundationProfoundUniversityLibertarianThinkerScholarCultBizarreLecturesGeometryEuroKimMasonsComicalOpticsKim Il SungVon Mises
Author:Tom G. Palmer
Create image

“I can't resist telling you that when the Vienna Economics Institute celebrated its centennial, many years ago, they invited, as their keynote speaker, my father [John Kenneth Galbraith]. The leading economists of the Austrian school- including von Hayek and von Haberler - returned for the occasion. And so my father took a moment to reflect on the economic triumphs of the Austrian Republic since the war, which, he said, "would not have been possible without the contribution of these men." They nodded - briefly - until it dawned on them what he meant. They'd all left the country in the 1930s.”

MenYearsHas BeensSaidI CanWarCountryMomentsSchoolFatherLeftEconomicYears AgoEconomicsIncludingLibertarianOccasionsTriumphContributionRepublicSpeakersEconomistInvitedInstitute1930sViennaHayekKennethCentennialVon Hayek
Author:James K. Galbraith
Create image