Skip to content

When we estrange ourselves from history we do not enlarge, we diminish ourselves, even as individuals. We subtract from our lives one meaning which they do in fact possess, whether we recognize it or not. We cannot help living in history. We can only fail to be aware of it.

— Robert Heilbroner The Future As History (1960)

Another quote →

More quotes by Robert Heilbroner

He who enlists a man's mind wields a power even greater than the sword or the scepter.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

It is from the scope and wisdom of the economists of the past that we must reap the knowledge with which to face the future.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

If an economy in the doldrums could drift indefinitely, the price of government inaction might be graver by far than the consequences of bold unorthodoxy.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

The secret to economic growth lay in the fact that that each generation attacked Nature not only with its own energies and resources, but with the heritage of equipment accumulated by its forebears.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

All Robert Heilbroner quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Robert Heilbroner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.