Alan Blinder famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Life is not a multiple choice test, it's an open-book essay exam.
-- Alan Blinder

#Book #Choices #Tests
The last duty of a central banker is to tell the public the truth.
-- Alan Blinder

#Bankers #Lasts #Duty
Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].
-- Alan Blinder

#Democracy #Public Opinion #Input
There is a kind of a cascading chain, ... If one can't sell, then that business doesn't buy and that means the next business doesn't sell, and the previous business doesn't sell, and so on.
-- Alan Blinder

#Mean #Next #Kind
In the classic old business cycle, there would be a diminution in sales; it would take a little while for this information to reach corporate headquarters. And there would be an inventory pileup. And then - bam - businesses would react, sometimes violently, by cutting production.
-- Alan Blinder

#Cutting #Would Be #Inventory
If you try to give an on-the-one-hand-or-the-other- hand answer, only one of the hands tends to get quoted.
-- Alan Blinder

#Hands #Giving #Trying
"Murphys law of economic policy": Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.
-- Alan Blinder

#Law #Influence #Economics
And the maestro surely wielded the chairman's baton with extraordinary skill. His stellar record suggests that the only right answer to the age-old question of whether it is better to be lucky or good may be: both.
-- Alan Blinder

#Skills #Age #Lucky
'Murphys law of economic policy': Economists have the least influence on policy where they know the most and are most agreed; they have the most influence on policy where they know the least and disagree most vehemently.
-- Alan Blinder

#Law #Influence #Economics

An American has invented a remote control that will turn off any telly within a 20ft radius. What a marvellous device! What a splendid invention! What a really helpful and improving way of devoting your time to building something that turns off culture. Next week, I'm instigating Burn a Book Week, to encourage even more conversation. I've come up with a fantastic little device which I'll call a box of matches.
One has to ascertain the right path for his activities by following in the footsteps of great saintly persons and books of knowledge under the guidance of a spiritual master.
Some men are more interesting than their books but my book is more interesting than its man.
My depth of purse is not so great Nor yet my bibliophilic greed, That merely buying doth elate: The books I buy I like to read: Still e'en when dawdling in a mead, Beneath a cloudless summer sky, By bank of Thames, or Tyne, or Tweed, The books I read â€” I like to buy.
It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?
My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads.
There never comes a point where a theory can be said to be true. The most that one can claim for any theory is that it has shared the successes of all its rivals and that it has passed at least one test which they have failed.
This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions.
When I test I never go right to the limit. Only because when you are below the limit you can go at the same speed all day, and that's the only way you can be absolutely sure about what you are testing.
Life is not a multiple choice test, it's an open-book essay exam.

Alan Blinder famous quotes

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