Top 100 Economist Quotes

I love magazines. I always read ‘Time,’ ‘Newsweek’ and ‘The Economist.’ When I get my hair cut, French ‘Vogue,’ French ‘Elle,’ ‘Paris Match’ – I read them all in 10 minutes.

It is true that I am one of the co-authors of ‘Nudge,’ and I am a behavioral economist, but it does not mean that everything we write about in that book is behavioral economics, nor does it mean that my co-author, the distinguished legal scholar Cass Sunstein, is a behavioral economist.

A Swedish physicist can not discuss his work with fifty people unless he goes abroad. A Swedish economist can get opinions and instructions in his native language from thousands upon thousands of his fellow citizens.

‘The Economist’ is a biased organization.

Any reasonable economist will tell you that it’s nearly impossible to isolate the impact of right-to-work laws on a state’s job growth. A multitude of other factors intervene. However, one thing the numbers can show is that right-to-work laws have a negative effect on the wages of workers in that state.

When former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari passed the torch to Zedillo, he knew that economic difficulty lay ahead but believed that the Yale-trained economist’s impeccable technical credentials would be enough to maintain Mexico’s stability.

Economists have allowed themselves to walk into a trap where we say we can forecast, but no serious economist thinks we can. You don’t expect dentists to be able to forecast how many teeth you’ll have when you’re 80. You expect them to give good advice and fix problems.

As many will remember, a respected Army Corps economist filed a whistleblower complaint about the Corps’ use of faulty data to justify lock and dam expansion.

I think you’ve got to watch out for anybody in high school who says he wants to become an economist.

I think the association of economics with forecasting is unfortunate and is down to the fact that one great way to get an investment bank’s name on business television is to hire a guy called a Chief Economist who will go and prognosticate.

If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered – the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

I am a trained economist.

An old friend of mine, an economist by trade, once explained to me that the statistical definition of ‘dilemma’ is 49.9% in favor and 50.1% against. If the gap is greater, there is no dilemma, because the answer is clear.

As many will remember, a respected Army Corps economist filed a whistleblower complaint about the Corps’ use of faulty data to justify lock and dam expansion.

I am a woman, I am a housewife, I am a government official, I’ve been twice a government secretary, I’ve been leader of a parliamentary group, I am an economist.

Shopping for an annuity with hundreds of thousands of dollars at stake can be daunting, even for an economist.

In the fourth grade, my history teacher gave us a project: Why was the auto industry located in Detroit, Michigan? I didn’t know I was going to be an economist, but I knew I was going to do something that was involved in answering questions like that one because I thought that was a fascinating question.

No real English gentleman, in his secret soul, was ever sorry for the death of a political economist.

I’m a big fan of economist Milton Freidman.

I’m not an economist and we all know economists were created to make weather forecasters look good.

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.

Keynes was a very good economist. He was brilliant. He had wonderful insights. His work has inspired me many times.

While I tend to side with economist Milton Freidman when it comes to free-market economics, there is a place for ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ where national security is concerned.

It is obvious that the monetary union among 17 very different European countries does not work. As an economist, I know that the Eurozone is not an optimum currency area, as defined in economic theory.

The economist John Maynard Keynes said that in the long run, we are all dead. If he were around today he might say that, in the long run, we are all on Social Security and Medicare.

I don’t imagine Heads of Government would ever be able to say I’m not an economist therefore I can’t take decisions on matters of the economy; I’m not a soldier I can’t take decisions on matters of defence; I’m not an educationist so I can’t take decisions about education.

I’m a free-market economist from years and years back, and I’ve never veered from that.

I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

I think that it’s more important for an economist to be wise and sophisticated in scientific method than it is for a physicist because with controlled laboratory experiments possible, they practically guide you; you couldn’t go astray. Whereas in economics, by dogma and misunderstanding, you can go very sadly astray.

I’m a free-market economist from years and years back, and I’ve never veered from that.

My mother died of lung cancer last year. I felt helpless. As an economist, I thought, ‘What can I do?’

Teach a parrot the terms ‘supply and demand’ and you’ve got an economist.

An economist is a man who states the obvious in terms of the incomprehensible.

I’m no economist. I don’t even play one on TV. I’m just a husband, a father, a taxpayer.

One of the best predictors of policy around is Thomas Ferguson’s investment theory of politics, as he calls it – very outstanding political economist – which essentially – I mean, to say it in a sentence, he describes elections as occasions in which groups of investors coalesce and invest to control the state.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.

Some economists seem to think that only a credentialed economist has the right to be utterly wrong about an issue of economics. Their contempt for amateurs – columnists with broad audiences, for example – would sear the lungs if inhaled.

When I meet people on airplanes and they find out I’m an economist, they usually ask about stock tips.

Before I leave for the office in the morning, I read the ‘Financial Times’ and the ‘Economist.’ The key articles I need to understand are there, after which I focus on prep for the day.

When former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari passed the torch to Zedillo, he knew that economic difficulty lay ahead but believed that the Yale-trained economist’s impeccable technical credentials would be enough to maintain Mexico’s stability.

Being an economist is the least ethical profession, closer to charlatanism than any science.

What I’m asking for is a new economic order. I don’t know how to construct that; I’m not an economist.

When I was starting out, when I put aside my career as an economist. I looked at every book, went to every show, did my first stories, developed my first films. A fabulous time.

I’m an economist. I’m not a political servant.

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen.

My father is an economist who specialized in foreign food policy, and my mother worked for AID, a branch of the State Department, so food in regards to world affairs was talked about a lot.

Classic English liberalism of the sort that ‘The Economist’ was founded to champion and still espouses is about open societies and free markets.

I stay up on current events. I read ‘The New Yorker’ and ‘The Economist.’ I go to community meetings to see what concerns the people in my neighborhood. I studied literature in college, so I also continue to read poetry, literature, and novels.

Manmohan Singh is the best politician India has seen. I can’t say the same about him as an economist.

If you ask an economist what’s driven economic growth, it’s been major advances in things that mattered – the mechanization of farming, mass manufacturing, things like that. The problem is, our society is not organized around doing that.

If you look underneath the surface of the Tea Party movement, on the other hand, you will find that it is not sophisticated. It’s not like these people have read the economist Friedrich August von Hayek.

The left-brainer and the economist in me says watch what people do, not what they say.

I don’t like the Sunday newspapers – I read them because I have to. ‘Sunday Times,’ ‘Telegraph,’ ‘Independent’ on Sunday – I find them heavy and too much! I prefer ‘The Economist.’

Obviously, no one knows when the market is going to bottom out, and I am certainly not an economist.

You do not have to be an economist to know that putting up the cost of employing someone is a pretty barking thing to do when you’re trying to get out of a recession.

Amherst was pivotal in my broad intellectual development; MIT in my development as a professional economist.