31 Economics Quotes To Inspire

Economics often serves as the backbone of societal progress, influencing decisions that shape our world on both micro and macro levels. From insightful musings by modern-day economists to timeless wisdom from historical figures, the words of those steeped in economic theory can spark innovation, ambition, and thoughtful reflection. Dive into our curated collection of the top 31 economics quotes designed to inspire you, provoke insightful contemplation, and perhaps even influence your own economic outlook or career. Ready to explore the powerful intersection of eloquence and economy? Let's embark on this enlightening journey.

1. “As with our earlier worship of saints and facts, there is something silly about grown men and women striving to reduce their vision of themselves and of civilization to bean counting. The message of the competition/efficiency/marketplace Trinity seems to be that we should drop the idea of ourselves developed over two and a half millennia. We are no longer beings distinguished by our ability to think and to act consciously in order to affect our circumstances. Instead we should passively submit ourselves and our whole civilization -- our public structures, social forms and cultural creativity -- to the abstract forces of unregulated commerce. It may be that most citizens have difficulty with the argument and would prefer to continue working on the idea of dignified human intelligence. If they must drop something, they would probably prefer to drop the economists. ” - John Ralston Saul

2. “It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” - Murray N. Rothbard

3. “The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing soundeconomic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit ofthis task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatanswhose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able toadvance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do theyinsult them.” - Ludwig Von Mises

4. “Most of us have no sympathy with the rich idler who spends his life in pleasure without ever doing any work. But even he fulfills a function in the life of the social organism. He sets an example of luxury that awakens in the multitude a consciousness of new needs and gives industry the incentive to fulfill them.” - Ludwig Von Mises

5. “Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. ” - John Kenneth Galbraith

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

7. “Economists are generally negligent of their heroes.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

8. “But there is merit even in the mentally retarded legislator. He asks the questions that everyone is afraid to ask for fear of seeming simple.” - John Kenneth Galbraith

9. “Even if we could grow our way out of the crisis and delay the inevitable and painful reconciliation of virtual and real wealth, there is the question of whether this would be a wise thing to do. Marginal costs of additional growth in rich countries, such as global warming, biodiversity loss and roadways choked with cars, now likely exceed marginal benefits of a little extra consumption. The end result is that promoting further economic growth makes us poorer, not richer.” - Herman E. Daly

10. “It has been discovered that with a dull urban population, all formed under a mechanical system of State education, a suggestion or command, however senseless and unreasoned, will be obeyed if it be sufficiently repeated.” - Hilaire Belloc

11. “One of the Great Rules of Economics According to John GreenIf you are rich, you have to be an idiot not to stay rich. And if you are poor, you have to be really smart to get rich.” - John Green

12. “Our hopes of avoiding the fate which threatens must...[be to make]adjustments that will be needed if we are to recover and surpass our former standards...and only if every one of us is ready to individually obey the necessities of readjustment shall we be able to get through a difficult period as free men who can choose their own way of life. Let a uniform minimum be secured to everybody by all means; but let us admit at the same time that with this assurance of a basic minimum all claims for a privileged security for particular classes must lapse....” - Friedrich August von Hayek

13. “Look, America is no more a democracy than Russia is a Communist state. The governments of the U.S. and Russia are practically the same. There's only a difference of degree. We both have the same basic form of government: economic totalitarianism. In other words, the settlement to all questions, the solutions to all issues are determined not by what will make the people most healthy and happy in the bodies and their minds but by economics. Dollars or rubles. Economy uber alles. Let nothing interfere with economic growth, even though that growth is castrating truth, poisoning beauty, turning a continent into a shit-heap and riving an entire civilization insane. Don't spill the Coca-Cola, boys, and keep those monthly payments coming.” - Tom Robbins

14. “It is because every individual knows little and, in particular, because we rarely know which of us knows best that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.” - Friedrich August von Hayek

15. “An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.” - Laurence J. Peter

16. “Remember, aid cannot achieve the end of poverty. Only homegrown development base on the dynamism of individuals and firms in free markets can do that.” - William Easterly

17. “This book is an essay in what is derogatorily called "literary economics," as opposed to mathematical economics, econometrics, or (embracing them both) the "new economic history." A man does what he can, and in the more elegant - one is tempted to say "fancier" - techniques I am, as one who received his formation in the 1930s, untutored. A colleague has offered to provide a mathematical model to decorate the work. It might be useful to some readers, but not to me. Catastrophe mathematics, dealing with such events as falling off a height, is a new branch of the discipline, I am told, which has yet to demonstrate its rigor or usefulness. I had better wait. Econometricians among my friends tell me that rare events such as panics cannot be dealt with by the normal techniques of regression, but have to be introduced exogenously as "dummy variables." The real choice open to me was whether to follow relatively simple statistical procedures, with an abundance of charts and tables, or not. In the event, I decided against it. For those who yearn for numbers, standard series on bank reserves, foreign trade, commodity prices, money supply, security prices, rate of interest, and the like are fairly readily available in the historical statistics.” - Charles P. Kindleberger

18. “In my considered opinion, salary is payment for goods delivered and it must conform to the law of supply and demand. If, therefore, the fixed salary is a violation of this law - as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together and both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other only earns two thousand , or when lawyers and hussars, possessing no special qualifications, are appointed directors of banks with huge salaries - I can only conclude that their salaries are not fixed according to the law of supply and demand but simply by personal influence. And this is an abuse important in itself and having a deleterious effect on government service.” - Leo Tolstoy

19. “Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine - the special pleading of selfish interests.” - Henry Hazlitt

20. “It appears - because it has been the case for twenty years - that every problem is solvable...that no matter how badly the world economy slumps there is a pain-free way out of it. Once the realization dawns that there is not, and that the pain will be severe, the question is posed that has not really been posed for twenty years: who should feel it?” - Paul Mason

21. “If the world were full of the self-seeking individuals found in economics textbooks, it would grind to a halt because we would be spending most of our time cheating, trying to catch the cheaters, and punishing the caught. The world works as it does only because people are not the totally self seeking agents that free-market economics believes them to be. We need to design an economic system that, while acknowledging that people are often selfish, exploits other human motives to the full and gets the best out of people. The likelihood is that, if we assume the worst about people, we will get the worst out of them.” - Ha-Joon Chang

22. “The decline of geography in academia is easy to understand: we live in an age of ever-increasing specialization, and geography is a generalist's discipline. Imagine the poor geographer trying to explain to someone at a campus cocktail party (or even to an unsympathetic adminitrator) exactly what it is he or she studies. "Geography is Greek for 'writing about the earth.' We study the Earth.""Right, like geologists.""Well, yes, but we're interested in the whole world, not just the rocky bits. Geographers also study oceans, lakes, the water cycle...""So, it's like oceanography or hydrology.""And the atmosphere.""Meteorology, climatology...""It's broader than just physical geography. We're also interested in how humans relate to their planet.""How is that different from ecology or environmental science?""Well, it encompasses them. Aspects of them. But we also study the social and economic and cultural and geopolitical sides of--""Sociology, economics, cultural studies, poli sci.""Some geographers specialize in different world regions.""Ah, right, we have Asian and African and Latin American studies programs here. But I didn't know they were part of the geography department.""They're not."(Long pause.)"So, uh, what is it that do study then?” - Ken Jennings

23. “The energy and daring is to resist the noes, until the final yes has been achieved.” - Jeffrey D. Sachs

24. “Scholars have long debated whether capital markets lead to appropriate levels of saving and investment for future generations.” - David L. Weimer

25. “We must arm ourselves with patience and wisdom and listen to the poor what they want. This is the best way to avoid the trap of ignorance, ideology and inertia on our side.” - Abhijit V. Banerjee

26. “Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.” - E.F. Schumacher

27. “If the bringing of children into the world is today an economic burden, it is because the social system is inadequate; and not because God’s law is wrong. Therefore the State should remove the causes of that burden. The human must not be limited and controlled to fit the economic, but the economic must be expanded to fit the human.” - Fulton J. Sheen

28. “Overborrowing or overlending? Lenders encourage indebtedness because it is profitable. Developing country governments are sometimes even pressured to overborrow ... Even without corruption, it is easy to be influenced by Western businessmen and financiers ... Countries that aren't sure that borrowing is worth the rist are told how important it is to establis a credit rating: borrow even if you really don't need the money.” - Joseph E. Stiglitz

29. “the euro, it seems, is stuck in a political no man's land – trapped between two opposing world views. And the battleground is not economics, but ethics.” - Martin Cohen

30. “So let us be clear about this up front: We hope to recruit you to join an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. That is the process under way - not a drama of victimization but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen.This is a story of transformation. It is change that is already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you'll just open your heart and join in.” - Nicholas D. Kristof

31. “It is a curious thought that the earliest description of the steam-engine in antiquity describes its use for the magic opening of the temple doors, when the priests lit the fires on the altars, to deceive the populace into ascribing to a deity what was the work of the engineer. In much the same way today, the almost boundless fecundity of the creative scientific discoveries and inventions of the age are being appropriated for the purpose of the mysterious opening of doors into the holy of holies of the temples of mammon by a hierarchy of imposters and humbugs, whom it is the first task of a sane civilization to expose and clear out.” - Frederick Soddy