Adam Smith (1723-1790)
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which by far the greater part of the numbers are poor and miserable.
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their numbers, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightly exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
As plants, animals, minerals, air, light, etc. in theory form part of human consciousness, partly as objects of a natural science, partly as objects of art.......so they also form in practice a part of human life and activity... Nature is the inorganic body of man, that is, nature insofar as it is not the human body. Man lives by nature.
Alfred Marshall (1842-1924)
Economic laws are statements with regard to the tendencies of man's action under certain conditions. They are hypothetical only in the same sense as are the laws of the physical science; for those laws also contain or imply conditions. But there is mre difficulty in making the conditions clear, and more danger in any failure to do so, in economics than physics. The laws of human action are not indeed as simple, as definite or as clearly ascertainable as the law of gravitation, but many of them may rank with the laws of those natural sciences which deal with the complex subject matter.
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
The world has enough for everybody's need, but not enough for everybody's greed
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunt economist. Madmen in authority, who hear the voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.
Joan Robinson (1903-1983)
Proposals for policy necessarily run into conflicts of interest and incompatibility of judgements. Every participant in the debate has his own prejudices.
Friedrich Hayek
Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for?
Robert Solow
We have to piece together what we can from casual observation, questionnaires, folk beliefs, historical narrative, and anything that comes to hand
The kind of economic organizations that provide economic freedom directly also promotes political freedom because it separates economic power from political power and in this way enables the one to offset the other
