It is states that are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and immeasurable destruction in the 20th century alone. Compared to that, the victims of private crimes are almost negligible.

The rule in the women's colleges was that after 7 p.m. all men were beasts. Up until 7 p.m. they were all angels, and the girls simply had to learn to live with that routine and practise love in the afternoon.

The natural consequence of our submission, even in part, to the system that looks to compelling the export of raw products, the exhaustion of the land, the cheapening of labour, and the export of the labourer.

Increased business sales would almost certainly raise the productive capacity of the economy by encouraging additional capital spending, especially if accompanied by reduced uncertainty about future prospects.

To me, the greatest asset of the Fed is the people. We have a tremendously dedicated staff... They feel proud to work for the Fed because this is such a competent, professional and well-respected organization.

Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?

The power to become habituated to his surroundings and therefore to no longer be grateful for what is good in it is a marked characteristic of mankind and needs to be fought against if a person is to be happy.

If those states which did not have right-to-carry concealed gun provisions had adopted them in 1992, approximately 1,570 murders; 4,177 rapes; and over 60,000 aggravate assaults would have been avoided yearly.

I understand why political leaders in the beginning want to be cheerleaders to generate optimism. But to admit that they didn't understand the depths of the problem afterwards, I found a little bit surprising.

As I noted in my Nobel lecture, an early insight in my work on the economics of information concerned the problem of appropriability - the difficulty that those who pay for information have in getting returns.

These debt obligations will simply erode America's standard of living in the future. Money spent to service the debt is money that we don't have to spend on consumption's goods, or on investment in our future.

After the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the shutdown of much of New York City by Sandy in 2012, and now the devastation wrought on Texas by Harvey, the U.S. can and should do better.

References to everybody just disturb me, and it also disturbs me that the people who make policy are not the same people who live policy. When we talk about everybody, we are leaving a whole lot of bodies out.

In the last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed.

I only have disdain for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He raised taxes and has increased regulations. What else is new? He's a bully who wants to micro-manage people's lives by mandate, not persuasion.

The obstacles facing academic economists are formidable, for tenure and professional advancement still depend to a large extent on a willingness to comply with and to work within the tenets of orthodox theory.

One of the most powerful insights in economics is this idea of a division of labor. You do the thing you're good at. Other people do something else that they're good at. The net effect is better for everybody.

If we made an income pyramid out of a child's blocks, with each layer portraying $1,000 of income, the peak would be far higher than the Eiffel Tower, but almost all of us would be within a yard of the ground.

I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.

A government decision that slashes spending at the wrong time and sends a weak economy into a tailspin can be just as undisciplined as one that unleashes a wasteful spending spree in an overheated environment.

If you're trading individual securities, you're almost certainly making a mistake. Because most professional managers can't outperform their benchmarks, and there's little reason to think that individuals can.

I was convinced that the trading frequency measured a fundamental heartbeat of financial markets. Clearly it reflected the flow of information. It turns out also to be closely related to measures of liquidity.

In a bubble, eventually people start saying, 'Wait a minute... these prices are way too high! What is anyone buying anymore? What could they possibly be thinking?' And then there's a correction and a bursting.

The feedback women are getting at work is amazingly ineffective or vague. You need to signal to your boss or senior colleagues that you want honest feedback, and that you promise not to take it too personally.

I sometimes wish we could have, over the next five or ten years, a lot of horrid things happening-you know, like tornadoes in the Midwest and so forth-that would get people very concerned about climate change.

If you have been voting for politicians who promise to give you goodies at someone else's expense, then you have no right to complain when they take your money and give it to someone else, including themselves

The whole result of continued labour is not often consumed and enjoyed in a moment; the result generally lasts for a certain length of time. We must then conceive the capital as being progressively uninvested.

The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.

Achieving price stability is not only important in itself, it is also central to attaining the Federal Reserve's other mandate objectives of maximum sustainable employment and moderate long-term interest rates.

Despite the impression created by some economic pundits, the U.S. economy is not a delicate little machine that needs to be fine-tuned with exact precision by benevolent policymakers to keep from breaking down.

Laissez Faire, laissez passer. Let it be, let it pass. The phrase is not readily translatable. It was widely used by the Physiocrats in urging freedom from government interference and was adopted by Adam Smith.

Ah, you miserable creatures! You who think that you are so great! You who judge humanity to be so small! You who wish to reform everything! Why don't you reform yourselves? That task would be sufficient enough.

Many who think themselves infinitely superior to the aberrations of Nazism, and sincerely hate all manifestations, work at the same time for ideals whose realization would lead straight to the abhorred tyranny.

In the United States, and to only slightly lesser degree in all the other rich and economically progressive Western countries, public debate has at all times been dominated by the adherents of a "free" economy.

If you keep tax cuts for the wealthiest, it won't stimulate the economy, but it will add to the deficit. And, really, what we have to be focused on right now is what economists would call the opportunity costs.

The problem with a purely collective system is not only that it requires economic growth, and the right sort of demographic trends, but that it prevents people thinking about their futures in a responsible way.

When you hire a nanny, the question you ask yourself is, 'What's best for my precious child?' And do you really want someone who feels that your motive in life is to minimize the amount you spend on your child?

A bad book is the worse that it cannot repent. It has not been the devil's policy to keep the masses of mankind in ignorance; but finding that they will read, he is doing all in his power to poison their books.

Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political — legislative and administrative — decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.

Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.

The only people benefiting in Iraq war are George Bush's Jr. friends in the oil industry. He has done the American economy and the global economy an enormous disfavor, but his Texan friends couldn't be happier.

President [Barack] Obama's choice of Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff was questionable, and perhaps coverups around the police violence against black people in Chicago is reflective of Mr. Emmanuel's values.

At the opposite pole from the gift is tribute - that is, a grant made out of fear and under threat. A threat is a statement of the form "you do something that I want or I will do something that you do not want.

We should assume that we all have a lot in common. Speak as if our views are the only sensible ones. This resonates with ordinary people, as long as we speak ordinary language and don't come across as elitists.

The word 'free' is used three times in the Declaration of Independence and once in the First Amendment to the Constitution, along with 'freedom.' The word 'fair' is not used in either of our founding documents.

Only individuals have ends and can act to attain them. There are no such things as ends of or actions by 'groups,' 'collectives,' or 'States,' which do not take place as actions by various specific individuals.

Edward Conard provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading.

The field of 'economics and organization' is still young and needs support. I have been a chaired professor much of my academic life and know that such chairs are important for recruiting and retaining faculty.

Vertical intergration is an organizational response to the contracting difficulties that attend intermediate product markets where trades that are supported by transaction-specific assets are exposed to hazard.

Managerial discretion can take many forms, some very subtle. Individual managers may run slack operations; they may pursue subgoals that are at variance with corporate purposes; they can engage in self-dealing.

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