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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.

— Robert Heilbroner The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

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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)

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)

The profit motive, we are constantly being told, is as old as man himself.

The Worldly Philosophers (1953)

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Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

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.