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It may strike us as odd that the idea of gain is a relatively modern one; we are schooled to believe that man is essentially an acquisitive creature and that left to himself he will behave as any self-respecting businessman would. The profit motive, we are constantly being told, is as old as man himself.
Nothing could be further from the truth.

— 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Nothing could be further from the truth.

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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.