Paul Samuelson famous quotes

Good questions outrank easy answers.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Answers #Environment #Easy

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

#Analysis #Politics #Fads

This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Wall #Messages #Attempting

An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Greed #Intriguing #Materialism

What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth...The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Powerful #Doubt #Growth

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Philosophy #People #Political

Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Money #Las Vegas #Saving

Companies are not charitable enterprises: They hire workers to make profits. In the United States, this logic still works. In Europe, it hardly does.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Europe #Doe #United States

It is not easy to get rich in Las Vegas, at Churchill Downs, or at the local Merrill Lynch office.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Vegas #Office #Rich

The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Nine #Lasts

Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Teaching #Writing #Law

The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution 'exists'; the problem is how to 'find' it.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Decision #World #Way

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Railroads #Stories #Internet

The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Kings #Decision #Use

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Political #Support #Growth

Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Causes #Environment #Very Good

The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Hands #Survival #Elbows

The growth of a nation's productive potential is the central factor in determining its growth in real wages and living standards.... high rates of investment and saving usually have a big payoff in promoting economic growth.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Real #Growth #Wages

Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was explained to them
-- Paul Samuelson

#Believe #Intelligent #Men

Man does not live by GNP alone.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Men #Doe #Economics

In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching...
-- Paul Samuelson

#Real #Teaching #Thinking

There is something in people; you might even call it a little bit of a gambling instinct… I tell people investing should be dull. It shouldn't be exciting. Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Gambling #Las Vegas #People

Economics never was a dismal science. I should be a realistic science.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Economics #Realistic #Should

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

#Development #May #Analysis

The recent market run-up that appreciated run-of-the- mill shares also chanced to send up those token gold holdings. Pure luck, undeserved and unlikely to reoccur. Good questions outrank easy answers.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Running #Luck #Gold

An American economist of two generations ago, H. J. Davenport, who was the best friend Thorstein Veblen ever had (Veblen actually lived for a time in Davenport's coal cellar) once said: "There is no reason why theoretical economics should be a monopoly of the reactionaries." All my life I have tried to take this warning to heart, and I dare call it to your favorable attention.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Heart #Two #Attention

What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job?
-- Paul Samuelson

#Jobs #Black #Doe

Two-thirds of a century after [The Road to Serfdom] got written, hindsight confirms how inaccurate its innuendo about the future turned out to be.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Two #Hindsight #Century

Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Economy #Function #Proof

Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Japan #Self #Hype

Funeral by funeral, theory advances.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Funeral #Theory

But the trouble is that he [Alan Greenspan] had been an Ayn Rander. You can take the boy out of the cult but you can't take the cult out of the boy.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Boys #Libertarian #Trouble

We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Running #Athlete #Past

Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Two #Government #Democracy

Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society. ...Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency. A land value tax can be called 'the useful tax on measured land surplus'.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Land #Incentives #Maximizing

I don't care who writes a nation's laws-or crafts its advanced treaties-if I can write its economics textbooks
-- Paul Samuelson

#Writing #Law #Textbooks

Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Years #Economics

Marshall's crime is to pretend to handle imperfect competition with tools only applicable to perfect competition.
-- Paul Samuelson

#Perfect #Competition #Tools