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Quotes about economics

133 quotes from 78 people

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I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared.
Thomas Jefferson1743–1826Letter to William Plumer (21 July 1816)
- Government
The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Chapter 24
In the long run we are all dead.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923), Ch. 3, p. 80
- Life & Death
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Chapter VI, pp. 235-236
- Government
In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923)
- Money
Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.
John Maynard Keynes1883–1946The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), Ch. 24, p. 383
- Ideas
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.
Martin Luther King Jr.1929–1968Speech to the Negro American Labor Council (May 1965), as quoted in From Civil Rights to Human Rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (2009), by Thomas F. Jackson, p. 230
If there were an Economist’s Creed, it would surely contain the affirmations ‘I understand the Principle of Comparative Advantage’ and ‘I advocate Free Trade’
PKPaul Krugmanborn 1953“Is Free Trade Passé?”, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn, 1987)
When the economy is in a depression, scarcity ceases to rule. Productive resources sit idle, so that it is possible to have more of some things without having less of others; free lunches are all around.
PKPaul Krugmanborn 1953“Depressions are Different”, in Robert M. Solow, ed. Economics for the Curious: Inside the Minds of 12 Nobel Laureates. 2014.
Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.
Richard Lamm1935–2021
- Christmas
We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018National Book Awards, November 2014
- Power
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence when built.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Reply to the New York Workingmen’s Democratic Republican Association (21 March 1864); Collected Works, Vol. 7, pp. 259-260
- Work
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison1751–1836“On Parties” (23 January 1792), Papers of James Madison Vol. XIV, pp. 197-8
It’s impossible for a white person to believe in capitalism and not believe in racism. You can’t have capitalism without racism.
Malcolm X1925–1965May 29, 1964
- Race
Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, Subsistence, increases only in an arithmetical ratio.
Thomas Robert Malthus1766–1834An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter I, paragraph 18, lines 1-2