Tag: Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day 8-17-16

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911

Quote of the Day 8-12-16

Individual man is the product of a long line of zoological evolution which has shaped his physiological inheritance. He is born the offspring and the heir of his ancestors, and the precipitate and sediment of all that his forefathers experienced are his biological patrimony. When he is born, he does not enter the world in general as such, but a definite environment. The innate and inherited biological qualities and all that life has worked upon him make a man what he is at any instant of his pilgrimage. They are his fate and destiny. His will is not “free” in the metaphysical sense of this term. It is determined by his background and all the influences to which he himself and his ancestors were exposed.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Quote of the Day 8-7-2016

There is the fact that man’s mind is itself a product of the civilization in which he has grown up and that it is unaware of much of the experience which has shaped it – experience that assists it by being embodied in the habits, conventions, language, and moral beliefs which are part of its makeup. Then there is the further consideration that the knowledge which any individual consciously manipulates is only a small part of the knowledge which at any one time contributes to the success of his action.
F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p. 75

Quote of the Day 8-3-2016

I had a growing feeling in the later years of my work at the subject that a good mathematical theorem dealing with economic hypothesis was very well unlikely to be good economics: and I went more and more on the rules – (1) Use mathematics as shorthand language, rather than as an engine of inquiry. (2) Keep to them till you have done. (3) Translate into English. (4) Then illustrate by examples that are important in real life (5) Burn the mathematics. (6) If you can’t succeed in 4, burn 3. This last I do often.
Alfred Marshall

Quote of the Day 8-1-2016

The train of logic departs from a picture that economists of a hundred years ago would recognize as familiar – Robinson Crusoe allocating effort between fish and bananas, say –  but barrels along at uncomfortable speed, picking up loads of subscripts on the way, into a fantasy land where the assumptions made about what people are able to know, to forecast and to calculate would leave them utterly bewildered and incredulous.
Axel Leijonhufvud “Episodes in a Century of Macroeconomics”