147 Economic Theory Quotes

Following is our list of economic theory quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about economic freedom.

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Famous Economic Theory Quotes

Economic theory is the most prestigious subject of instruction and study. Agricultural economics, labor economics and marketing are lower caste fields of study. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics, as it has emerged, can be made more productive by paying greater and more explicit attention to the ethical considerations that shape human behaviour and judgment. — Amartya Sen

Political Economy or Economics is a study of mankind in the ordinary business of life. — Alfred Marshall

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. - John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientific pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Economics was largely a form of intellectual prostitution where you got rewarded for saying what the powers that be wanted to hear. — Max Tegmark

I am saying that the economic approach provides a valuable unified framework for understanding all human behaviour — Gary Becker

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. — Friedrich August von Hayek

Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another. — Milton Friedman

What makes it [economics] most fascinating is that its fundamental principles are so simple that they can be written on one page, that anyone can understand them, and yet very few do. — Milton Friedman

We believe that economics does not necessarily have to be a zero-sum game; it can be a win-win proposition for everyone involved so long as they have the tools in which to succeed. — Ron Kind

There is nothing so practical as a good theory. — Kurt Lewin

Nature's economy shall be the base for our own, for it is immutable, but ours is secondary. An economist without knowledge of nature is therefore like a physicist without knowledge of mathematics. — Carl Linnaeus

Kelsoism is not accepted by modern scientific economics as a valid and fruitful analysis of the distribution of income but rather it is regarded as an amateurish and cranky fad. — Paul Samuelson

Economy is the basis of society. When the economy is stable, society develops. The ideal economy combines the spiritual and the material, and the best commodities to trade in are sincerity and love. — Morihei Ueshiba

Short Economic Theory Quotes

  • If economists were good at business, they would be rich men instead of advisers to rich men. — Kirk Kerkorian
  • In economics, the majority is always wrong. — John Kenneth Galbraith
  • Economics is like the Dutch language - I'm told it makes sense, but I have my doubts. — John Oliver
  • The point of studying economics is so as not to be fooled by economists. — Joan Robinson
  • Even for practical purposes theory generally turns out the most important thing in the end. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
  • Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs. — Charlie Munger
  • History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. — B. R. Ambedkar

Economic Theory Image Quotes

Economic theory quote An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.
An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.

What Is Economics Quotes

We are not afraid of economic sanctions or military intervention. What we are afraid of is Western universities. — Ruhollah Khomeini

To deal with radicalism and extremism, we need to deal with economic inequality. This is what I learned from my experience in Solo and then in Jakarta. — Joko Widodo

Even the greatest economic thinkers have historically struggled to agree on an answer to the question 'What is money?' — Robert Breedlove

Economic theory quote The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fits the facts of it's history.
The theory that religion is a force for peace, does not fits the facts of it's history.

We will never know what anyone is really like, until everyone has economic security and doesn't have to answer to anyone else. — Jacque Fresco

Movements have narratives. They tell stories, because they are not just about rearranging economics and politics. They also rearrange meaning. And they're not just about redistributing the goods. They're about figuring out what is good. — Marshall Ganz

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict. — Simone Weil

Economic theory quote Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.
Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.

Unless we understand what it is that leads to economic and financial instability, we cannot prescribe -- make policy -- to modify or eliminate it. Identifying a phenomenon is not enough; we need a theory that makes instability a normal result in our economy and gives us handles to control it. — Hyman Minsky

If you’ve relied on data and logic alone to make sense of the economy, you’d have been confused for a hundred years straight…So much of what happens in our economy is rooted in emotions, which can, at times, be nearly impossible to make sense of. — Morgan Housel

Look at the declining television coverage. Look at the declining voting rate. Economics and economic news is what moves the country now, not politics. — Robert Teeter

Reproductive freedom means economic freedom. And that's what this debate is about. — Diana DeGette

Economic Freedom Quotes

True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the twentieth century. — Aneurin Bevan

But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why? — Walter E. Williams

Economic theory quote We're all consumers. The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife.
We're all consumers. The consumer is not a moron; she is your wife.

Of the people, by the people, for the people. — Sun Yat-sen

Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship. — A. Philip Randolph

A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. — Milton Friedman

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. - Tacitus

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government. — Tacitus

Sometimes the lack of substantive freedoms relates directly to economic poverty — Amartya Sen

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right. — H. L. Mencken

It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. — C. S. Lewis

Economic Models Quotes

All models are wrong, but some are useful. — George E. P. Box

The linear 'Take - Make - Dispose' system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed and can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle — Ellen MacArthur

This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model, for the first time in human history. — Christiana Figueres

Economic theory quote Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.
Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.

I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no. — Dambisa Moyo

And this fear that US models are replacing everything else now spills over from the sphere of culture into our two remaining categories: for this process is clearly, at one level, the result of economic domination - of local cultural industries closed down by American rivals. — Fredric Jameson

The communist model does not work economically, we all realised that, but the capitalist model in the modern world also looks to be unsustainable. — Arsene Wenger

Economic theory quote Wealth breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Once oligarchs ach
Wealth breeds a class of people for whom human beings are disposable commodities. Once oligarchs achieve unchecked economic and political power, as they have in the United States, the citizens too become disposable.

I have a lot of trouble understanding all the detail of finance and administration - but if you combine intellectual and professional capacity with a social conscience, you can change things: countries, structures, economic models, colonial states. — Evo Morales

Whatever their limitations, Freud and Marx developed complex and subtle theories of human nature grounded in their observation of individual and social behavior. The crackpot rationalism of free-market economics merely relies on an abstract model of how people "must" behave. — Ellen Willis

We are committed with our lives to building a different model and a different future for humanity, the Earth, and other species. We have envisaged a moral alternative to economic globalization and we will not rest until we see it realized. — Maude Barlow

The European model is, first, a social and economic system founded on the role of the market, for no computer in the world can process information better than the market. — Jacques Delors

Social Theory Quotes

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. — John Rawls

For the record, feminism by definition is: 'The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.' — Emma Watson

My whole theory for the improvement of society is based on a belief in the discipline and the education of the individual to self-control and right doing, for the sake of right doing. I have never seen fundamental improvements imposed from the top by ordinances and laws. — Ida Tarbell

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all. — Alexis de Tocqueville

According to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy. — Mikhail Gorbachev

As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism. — Rose Wilder Lane

Change the instruments and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them — Bruno Latour

Internationalism is a social and political theory, a certain concept of how human society ought to be organized, and in particular a concept of how the nations ought to organize their mutual relations. — Christian Lous Lange

Atheism is a natural and inseparable part of Marxism, of the theory and practice of scientific socialism. Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism. — Vladimir Lenin

In social cognitive theory, perceived self-efficacy results from diverse sources of information conveyed vicariously and through social evaluation, as well as through direct experience — Albert Bandura

Economy And Economics Quotes

Today, the top one-tenth of 1% owns nearly as much wealth as the bottom 90%. The economic game is rigged, and this level of inequality is unsustainable. We need an economy that works for all, not just the powerful. — Bernie Sanders

It's a different kind of economic recovery. The kind where bankers steal trillions and you don't have a job. — Alex Jones

We cannot choose between [economic] growth and sustainability - we must have both — Paul Polman

Minimum wage law is the 'People's Fed.' Tie minimum wage to money supply. If there is pushback against this idea, then shut down the Fed and its ability to distort the economy, penalizing labor, or make the Fed's distortions available to all businesses and all workers. — Max Keiser

Further diversifying our economy is a key strategic focus of our future plans. It is therefore necessary to accelerate economic development efforts to continue building a leading global economy, to enhance our competitiveness and achieve the highest global rankings. — Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

There is a clear political desire to rebalance the British economy away from London towards the regions, and away from the services sector towards manufacturing. — Rishi Sunak

While microeconomics has focused on transactions between individuals, and macroeconomics on the role of government in the economy, the reality is that the most important economic decisions to any individual’s well-being are the ones they conduct in their trade-offs with their future self. — Saifedean Ammous

The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history. — Lawrence Summers

By fostering the economic health and vitality of local communities throughout the country, community banks play a central role in our national economy. — Jerome Powell

This economy will recover. And that means people will go back to work. Unemployment will get back down. — Jerome Powell

Political Theory Quotes

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. — Kwame Nkrumah

The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts - and not absolute and general. — Jiang Zemin

Social and political issues in general seem to me fairly simple; the effort to obfuscate them in esoteric and generally vacuous theory is one of the contributions of the intelligentsia to enhancing their own power and the power of those they serve. — Noam Chomsky

Christianity is not a political theory. It is not even a cultural theory. It is, at its root, all about changing the heart of each man and woman, boy and girl, so that we begin to think God's thoughts and act in accordance with his character. — Ravi Zacharias

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

The materialist theory of history, that all politics and ethics are the expression of economics, is a very simple fallacy indeed. It consists simply of confusing the necessary conditions of life with the normal preoccupations of life, that are quite a different thing. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

I was a man who was lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis...; discovering Marxism...was like finding a map in the forest. — Fidel Castro

Parkinson's Law is a purely scientific discovery, inapplicable except in theory to the politics of the day. It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow. — C. Northcote Parkinson

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. — John Maynard Keynes

In America, much foreign policy seems contrived to be an exercise in political theory with no attention to history whatsoever. Yet there's a great reverence for history - though it's history as thumb-sucking, security blanket-nibbling self-congratulation. — Simon Schama

Economic Systems Quotes

We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice. — Indira Gandhi

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! — Sayings

Many people see technology as the problem behind the so-called digital divide. Others see it as the solution. Technology is neither. It must operate in conjunction with business, economic, political and social system. — Carly Fiorina

The system that enables the most people to earn the most success is free enterprise, by matching up people's skills, interests, and abilities. In contrast, redistribution simply spreads money around. Even worse, it attenuates the ability to earn success by perverting economic incentives. — Arthur C. Brooks

I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. — Muhammad Yunus

Having a lower tax, simpler, fairer, flatter tax system is something that can drive growth. — Rishi Sunak

Today we have access to highly advanced technologies. But our social and economic system has not kept up with our technological capabilities that could easily create a world of abundance, free of servitude and debt. — Jacque Fresco

At Coinbase, our mission is to create an open financial system for the world. We believe that open protocols for money will create more innovation, economic freedom, and equality of opportunity in the world, just like the Internet did for publishing information. — Brian Armstrong

Through bitcoin, the Argentines are developing an economy which doesn't require the bankers. — Max Keiser

In a free market capitalist system, 'price signals' are everything. Prices are determined by buyers and sellers in the free market, and these prices are broadcast from the exchanges, reaching all corners of the economy - where they are used to transact business. — Max Keiser

Game Theory Quotes

It is difficult to play against Einstein's theory -on his first loss to Fischer — Mikhail Tal

The ball is round, the game lasts ninety minutes, and everything else is just theory. — Sepp Herberger

You can understand Bitcoin at different levels, but I think even the people who are implementing details of the protocol or thinking about cryptography protocols, or incentives and game theory, are effectively still learning things, which might be surprising to some people. — Adam Back

Study microeconomics, game theory, psychology, persuasion, ethics, mathematics, and computers. — Naval Ravikant

Every great master will find it useful to have his own theory on the openings, which only he himself knows, a theory which is closely linked with plans for the middle game. — Mikhail Botvinnik

The implication of game theory, which is also the implication of the third image, is, however, that the freedom of choice of any one state is limited by the actions of the others. — Kenneth Waltz

There is much of economic theory which is pursued for no better reason than its intellectual attraction; it is a good game. We have no reason to be ashamed of that, since the same would hold for many branches of mathematics. — Sir John Richard Hicks

We do have tendency, now in biology especially to make up stories, to make theoretical biology a kind of game, in fact we have game theory in biology which is meant to use the theory of games to make predictions or explain things. — Richard Lewontin

Anthroposophy is not a game, nor just a theory; it is a task that must be faced for the sake of human evolution. — Rudolf Steiner

A thorough understanding of game theory, should dim these greedy hopes. Knowledge of game theory does not make one a better card player, businessman or military strategist. — Anatol Rapoport

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More Economic Theory Quotes

Don't let anybody tell you it's corporations and businesses that create jobs. — Hillary Clinton

Si te acordás, cuando arrancó el año el ministro de Economía de aquel momento Martín Guzmán dijo que se esperaba un 33% de inflación. En ese entonces yo dije que era un dibujo, que ese presupuesto era una ofensa y una agresión a cualquiera que supiera de teoría económica. Bueno, ahora están haciendo la actualización con el presupuesto nuevo con 95%. De hecho, la inflación cuando tomás los ocho primeros y lo anualizas viene viajando a 95% y si tomás la punta viene viajando al 125%. Todos los que decían ‘loquito, loquito’, y, ¿qué pasó? Se parece a lo que yo dije. — Javier Milei

Mr. David Stockman has said that supply-side economics was merely a cover for the trickle-down approach to economic policy — what an older and less elegant generation called the horse-and-sparrow theory: If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows. — John Kenneth Galbraith

From the equilibrium and spontaneous order of Adam Smith and his heirs, from invisible-handed markets and perfect competition, supply and demand, and rewards and punishments, I was pushed to theories of disequilibrium and disorder, and information and noise, as the keys to understanding economic progress. — George Gilder

It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory. — David Stockman

Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. — Christian Lous Lange

We are all far less rational in our decision-making than standard economic theory assumes. Our irrational behaviors are neither random nor senseless: they are systematic and predictable. We all make the same types of mistakes over and over, because of the basic wiring of our brains. — Dan Ariely

The economic and social theories used by those who take part in the social struggle ought to be judged not by their objective value but primarily for their effectiveness in arousing emotions. The scientific refutation of them which can be made is useless, however correct it may be objectively. — Vilfredo Pareto

Like all social theories, internationalism must seek its basis in the economic and technical fields; here are to be found the most profound and the most decisive factors in the development of society. — Christian Lous Lange

My policies are based not on some economics theory, but on things I and millions like me were brought up with: an honest day's work for an honest day's pay; live within your means; put by a nest egg for a rainy day; pay your bills on time; support the police. — Margaret Thatcher

Classic economic theory, based as it is on an inadequate theory of human motivation, could be revolutionized by accepting the reality of higher human needs, including the impulse to self actualization and the love for the highest values. — Abraham Maslow

The flowering of human society depends on two factors: the intellectual power of outstanding men to conceive sound social and economic theories, and the ability of these or other men to make these ideologies palatable to the majority. — Ludwig von Mises

We've got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. — Tim Wirth

We need to revise our economic thinking to give full value to our natural resources. This revised economics will stabilize both the theory and the practice of free-market capitalism. It will provide business and public policy with a powerful new tool for economic development, profitability, and the promotion of the public good. — Paul Hawken

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered to him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically testing before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would become hopelessly jammed. — Edward Bernays

As a conservative, I maintain a healthy skepticism of the theory of man-made global warming. I also believe that more people enjoying the fruits of modernity and economic development is a good thing - as long as those people arrived legally and obey the law. — Gary Bauer

In economic theory the conclusions are sometimes less interesting than the route by which they are reached. — Piero Sraffa

The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behaviour it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern. — Herman E. Daly

The theory which follows is entirely based on a calculus of pleasure and pain; and the object of economics is to maximize happiness by purchasing pleasure, as it were, at the lowest cost of pain. — William Stanley Jevons

We survived the 1980's. Back then, the economic program was called 'trickle down.' That actually meant they were pissing on you. How the whole theory goes was this: 'We have all the money. If we drop some, it's yours. Go for it.' — Bill Maher

My interest in economics has always been in the whole corpus of economic theory, the interrelationships between the various fields of theory and their relevance for the formulation of economic policy. — James Meade

Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. — Ludwig von Mises

Economic theory has nothing to say as to what commodity will acquire the status of money. Historically, it happened to be gold. But if the physical makeup of our world would have been different or is to become different from what it is now, some other commodity would have become or might become money. The market will decide. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Libertarianism is a theory of politics that is so compelling that once you have absorbed it, it becomes the lens through which you end up understanding all economic and political events. — Llewellyn Rockwell

My job was to teach the whole corpus of economic theory, but there were two subjects in which I was especially interested, namely, the economics of mass unemployment and international economics. — James Meade

The main achievement of economics is that it has provided a theory of peaceful human cooperation. This is why the harbingers of violent conflict have branded it as a dismal science and why this age of wars, civil wars, and destruction has no use for it. — Ludwig von Mises

It was not until I got my first job, at the University of Washington in Seattle, and began playing chess with Don Gordon, a brilliant young theorist, that I learned economic theory. — Douglass North

Almost all systems of economic thought are premised on the idea of continued economic growth, which would be fine and dandy if we lived on an infinite planet, but there's this small, niggling, inconvenient fact that the planet is, in fact, finite, and that, unlike economic theory, it is governed by physical and biological reality — George Monbiot

Our new economic approach is rooted in ideas which stress the importance of macro-economics, post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment, and people and infrastructure. — Gordon Brown

Those, who are strongly wedded to what I shall call 'the classical theory', will fluctuate, I expect, between a belief that I am quite wrong and a belief that I am saying nothing new. It is for others to determine if either of these or the third alternative is right. — John Maynard Keynes

As far as social-economic theory is concerned, I am still a Marxist — Dalai Lama

People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.” — William Poundstone

I think that local school districts - not the federal government - should make the decision about how they teach science, biology, economics. I want my kids to be taught about evolution; I want my kids to be taught about other theories. — Bobby Jindal

Positivism eliminates any kind of natural law principle - for example, that there are economic laws which can be transgressed only at your peril. With positivism, there is a tendency to leap into ad hoc economic theory. — Murray Rothbard

A sure sign of a crisis is the prevalence of cranks. It is characteristic of a crisis in theory that cranks get a hearing from the public which orthodoxy is failing to satisfy. — Joan Robinson

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference. — Paul Samuelson

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