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Most of mainstream economics is not "big-picture economics." Our journals and textbooks are full of the grimy details about inventory cycles or the deadweight losses incident to taxes and regulation. Besides, most big pictures are wrong.

— Paul Samuelson

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More quotes by Paul Samuelson

What sex is to the biology classroom, stocks and investment riskiness is to the sophomore economics lecture hall.

Samuelson's Economics at Fifty: Remarks on the Occasion of the Anniversary of Publication (1998)

When finally mastered, its analysis is found to be obvious and at the same time new. In short, it is a work of genius.

The stock market has forecast nine of the last five recessions.

Economic theory is a mistress of even too tempting grace.

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference.

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