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Finance Quotes

Thomas Paine has the most entries, followed by Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders, David Graeber and Paul Samuelson. The sourced lines are scattered. Joseph Conrad, in Victory (1915), calls finance a mysterious world in which, incredible as it may appear, evaporation precedes liquidation. John Stuart Mill’s Principles of Political Economy (1848) is here for a passage on how the state should treat the criminal poor. Asimov’s 1950 novel is the source of the line that economics is on the side of humanity now.

The one flagged entry is “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable,” credited to John Kenneth Galbraith and marked misattributed.

Random quote on Finance

Most quoted on finance:

95% of Economics is common sense deliberately made complicated.

Ha-Joon Chang

Economics should be under no illusion that central banking will ever become a science.

Jürg Niehans

Belarus will continue to protect its economic interests in the face of Western sanctions.

Roman Golovchenko Roman Golovchenko (2021)

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.

John F. Kennedy

Our (Mongolia) economy is relatively small, but the insiders gained an advantage by using their political influence to get privileged access to all the public funds, investment, land permits.

Nyambaatar Khishgee Nyambaatar Khishgee (2023)

The real reason that physicians are rotten investors is that it never occurs to them that finance is a science, just like medicine.

William J. Bernstein The Four Pillars of Investing (2002)

She still believes in classical economics, the allocation of resources under conditions of scarcity. Information doesn’t work that way.

Charles Stross Accelerando (2005)

This is a serious analysis of a ridiculous subject, which is of course the opposite of what is usual in economics.

Paul Krugman

There is no evidence that risk takers in the economic domain have an unusual appetite for gambles on high stakes; they are merely less aware of risks than more timid people are.

Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

To not say all that can be said is the secret of discipline and economy.

Dejan Stojanovic

One should hardly have to tell academicians that information is a valuable resource: knowledge is power. And yet this occupies a slum dwelling in the town of economics. Mostly it is ignored.

George Stigler

The petty economies of the rich are just as amazing as the silly extravagances of the poor.

William Feather

Junz found revulsion growing strong within him. A planet full of people meant nothing against the dictates of economic necessity!

Isaac Asimov Empire novels (1950)

The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.

Thomas Sowell Is Reality Optional? (1993)

Organisms cannot survive in a medium consisting of their own final outputs. Neither can economies.

Herman E. Daly

(Econometrics is) the unification of economic theory, statistics and mathematics.

Ragnar Frisch Warren Page (2013)

Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?

Frank Herbert The Dosadi Experiment (1977)

Economics deals with the behavior of commodities rather than with the behavior of men.

Kenneth Boulding

Corporate globalization and the economic agreements designed to entrench it have little to do with trade — and all but the most ignorant neo-liberal pundits surely know this too.

David McNally Another World Is Possible : Globalization and Anti-capitalism (2002)

Making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg. It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

Lyndon B. Johnson

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