Martin Wolf Quotes & Sayings

There is no room for being creative in today's business ... Except for finding creative ways to be inefficient. — Martin Wolf

Those who condemn the immorality of liberal capitalism do so in comparison with a society of saints that has never existed - and never will — Martin Wolf

In order to change the system, we need to change our ideas. — Martin Wolf

People who think they know what is going to happen next are fools. Surprises - or what the brilliant author Nassim Taleb calls 'Black Swans' - are inevitable. Some are likely to be desperately unpleasant too — Martin Wolf

The four most dangerous words in finance are 'this time is different.' Thanks to this masterpiece by Carmen Reinhart at the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard, no one can doubt this again ... The authors have put an immense amount of work into collecting the data financial institutions needed if they were to have any chance of making quantitative risk management work. — Martin Wolf

Sustaining growth is the century's big challenge. — Martin Wolf

Cultural diversity and cultural change are desirable and inevitable. We are cultural animals, someone without a culture is not human. But the cultures we possess vary enormously. Indeed, the variability, over time and space is the great evolutionary advantage of humanity. Instead of changing biologically over millennia, human beings can change culturally over decades — Martin Wolf

The notion of the competitiveness of countries, on the model of the competitiveness of companies, is nonsense. — Martin Wolf

The essence of the contemporary monetary system is creation of money, out of nothing, by private banks' often foolish lending. — Martin Wolf

A country with secure property rights, scientific inquiry and technological innovation will become richer. But, since division of labour is limited by the size of the market, it will also benefit from trade, not just in goods and services, but in ideas, capital and people. The smaller a country is, the greater the benefits. Trade is far cheaper than empire, just as internal development is a less costly route to prosperity than plunder. This was the heart of Angell's argument. — Martin Wolf