Samuelson Quotes & Sayings

Man does not live by GNP alone. — Paul Samuelson

The stock market has predicted nine of the last five recessions. — Paul Samuelson

When the economy was going up, [Milton Friedman and I] both gave the same advice, and when the economy was going down, we gave the same advice. But in between he didn't change his advice at all. — Paul Samuelson

Economists are said to disagree too much but in ways that are too much alike: If eight sleep in the same bed, you can be sure that, like Eskimos, when they turn over, they'll all turn over together. — Paul Samuelson

The niceties of existence were not a matter of concern, yet everything around was closed down most of the time. If you lived in a middle-class community in Chicago, children and adults came daily to the door saying, 'We are starving, how about a potato?' I speak from poignant memory. — Paul Samuelson

Thousands of important and intelligent men have never been able to grasp the principle of comparative advantage or believe it even after it was explained to them — Paul Samuelson

Two-thirds of a century after [The Road to Serfdom] got written, hindsight confirms how inaccurate its innuendo about the future turned out to be. — Paul Samuelson

Companies are not charitable enterprises: They hire workers to make profits. In the United States, this logic still works. In Europe, it hardly does. — Paul Samuelson

Our ideal society finds it essential to put a rent on land as a way of maximizing the total consumption available to the society ... Pure land rent is in the nature of a 'surplus' which can be taxed heavily without distorting production incentives or efficiency. A land value tax can be called 'the useful tax on measured land surplus'. — Paul Samuelson

The problem is no longer that with every pair of hands that comes into the world there comes a hungry stomach. Rather it is that, attached to those hands are sharp elbows. — Paul Samuelson

L'homme qui a un peu use ses e motions est plus presse de plaire que d'aimer. The person who has used his emotions even a little is more anxious to please than to love. — Sydney Samuelson

Good questions outrank easy answers. — Paul A. Samuelson

Every good cause is worth some inefficiency. — Paul Samuelson

By keeping labor supply down, immigration policy tends to keep wages high. Let us underline this basic principle: Limitation of the supply of any grade of labor relative to all other productive factors can be expected to raise its wage rate; and increase in supply will, other things being equal, tend to depress wage rates. — Paul Samuelson

Still, I figure we shouldn't' discourage fans of actively managed funds. With all their buying and selling, active investors ensure the market is reasonably efficient. That makes it possible for the rest of us to do the sensible thing, which is to index. Want to join me in this parasitic behavior? To build a well-diversified portfolio, you might stash 70 percent of your stock portfolio into a Wilshire 5000-index fund and the remaining 30 percent in an international-index fund. — Paul Samuelson

But the trouble is that he [Alan Greenspan] had been an Ayn Rander. You can take the boy out of the cult but you can't take the cult out of the boy. — Paul Samuelson

As we strive to better understand how Jesus sees us and contemplate our own attempts to live as the Redeemer would have us live, let us remember his instructing observations and their universal applications in literally all that we do: "If ye love me, keep my commandments." (John 14:15) and "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." — Cecil O. Samuelson

For better or worse, US Keynesianism was so far ahead of where it started. I am a cafeteria Keynesian. You know what a cafeteria catholic is? — Paul Samuelson

That's what I would like to do until the end of time, to go on scribbling my articles on the third floor of the Sloan Building, in between playing tennis and drinking coffee at my other study in the Concord Avenue branch of Burger King. — Paul Samuelson

La socie te ne doit rien exiger de celui qui n'attend rien d'elle. Society should not ask anything of the person who expects nothing from society. — Sydney Samuelson

What we know about the global financial crisis is that we don't know very much. — Paul Samuelson

You know what happiness is: 'Having a little more money than your colleagues.' And that's not so tough in academic life. — Paul Samuelson

We must never forget that BYU is not just another "good" university. It was established by the Lord's servants and continues to be blessed with the direction and support of prophets, seers, and revelators. While we may not understand all of the details, we do know that Brigham Young University occupies a key place in the Lord's plans for the completion of His work in these last days. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Nulle cre ature humaine ne peut commander a' l'amour. No human being can give orders to love. — Sydney Samuelson

Let those who will write the nation's laws, if I can write its textbooks. — Paul Samuelson

The growth of a nation's productive potential is the central factor in determining its growth in real wages and living standards ... high rates of investment and saving usually have a big payoff in promoting economic growth. — Paul Samuelson

Economics has never been a science - and it is even less now than a few years ago. — Paul Samuelson

Funeral by funeral, theory advances. — Paul Samuelson

It is not easy to get rich in Las Vegas, at Churchill Downs, or at the local Merrill Lynch office. — Paul Samuelson

I don't care who writes a nation's laws-or crafts its advanced treaties-if I can write its economics textbooks — Paul Samuelson

I'm not sure most of the people that get caught up in the middle of a bubble can be described as irrational. It seems pretty rational to buy a house and flip it in the next few weeks at a profit when that's been happening for along time. — Paul Samuelson

Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway. — William Poundstone

Economics never was a dismal science. I should be a realistic science. — Paul Samuelson

The debate can be put in the form of the question: Resolved, that the best of money managers cannot be demonstrated to be able to deliver the goods of superior portfolio-selection performance. Any jury that reviews the evidence, and there is a great deal of relevant evidence, must at least come out with the Scottish verdict: Superior investment performance is unproved. — Paul Samuelson

We're a me-me-me generation. We're borrowing the savings of every nation in the world. We're ... piling up a big tab. Now, I may think we're too big to have a run on us. You may think that. But it's possible that God does not. — Paul Samuelson

What counts is results, and there can be no doubt that the Soviet planning system has been a powerful engine for economic growth ... The Soviet model has surely demonstrated that a command economy is capable of mobilizing resources for rapid growth. — Paul Samuelson

Perhaps there really are managers who can outperform the market consistently - logic would suggest that they exist. But they are remarkably well-hidden. — Paul Samuelson

A growing nation is the greatest ponzi game ever contrived. — Paul Samuelson

Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero. — William Poundstone

Investing should be more like watching paint dry or watching grass grow. If you want excitement, take $800 and go to Las Vegas. — Paul Samuelson

I want us to be as good as we say we are and as others think we should be. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Contrary to what many skeptics had earlier believed, the Soviet economy is proof that a socialist command economy can function and even thrive. — Paul Samuelson

We have arrived at socialized medicine in America. I do not report this as either a good or bad event but simply as something that has happened with hardly anyone realizing it. This is the first result - and probably the most important - of the national health care debate launched last week by President Clinton. Our politics and economy will never again be the same. — Robert J. Samuelson

An American economist of two generations ago, H. J. Davenport, who was the best friend Thorstein Veblen ever had (Veblen actually lived for a time in Davenport's coal cellar) once said: "There is no reason why theoretical economics should be a monopoly of the reactionaries." All my life I have tried to take this warning to heart, and I dare call it to your favorable attention. — Paul Samuelson

Anyone with special abilities earns a differential return on that flair, which we economists call a rent. Those few with extraordinary P.Q. (Performance Quotient) will not give away such rent to the Ford Foundation or the local bank trust department. They have too high an I.Q. for that. — Paul Samuelson

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. — Paul Samuelson

There must have been something in the air of Gary that led one into economics: the first Nobel Prize winner, Paul Samuelson, was also from Gary, as were several other distinguished economists. — Joseph Stiglitz

Academic pedigree alone is no guarantor of useful knowledge and wisdom. — Robert Samuelson

If President Clinton has his way, we will have a false debate in the 1996 election campaign. It will not engage real political choices - choices framed by our appetite for government services and our distaste for taxes - but rather artificial choices crafted by Clinton to advance his reelection. Clinton has clearly been using the budget as an election platform ... I dislike using the word 'lies,' but Clinton exploits such forbearance (widespread in the press) to spread untruths. — Robert J. Samuelson

Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes. — Paul Samuelson

That's what sometimes separates people who always run and always train and people who maybe move on in life and do something else. I think I'm a lot more likely to be someone like Joan Benoit (Samuelson), who keeps going forever, just because I actually really like it, as opposed to someone who stops and never runs again. — Dathan Ritzenhein

As every runner knows, running is about more than just putting one foot in front of the other; it is about our lifestyle and who we are. — Joan Benoit Samuelson

Globalization presumes sustained economic growth. Otherwise, the process loses its economic benefits and political support. — Paul Samuelson

You could be disqualified for a job [at Harvard] if you were either smart or Jewish or Keynesian. So what chance did this smart, Jewish, Keynesian have? — Paul Samuelson

The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution 'exists'; the problem is how to 'find' it. — Paul Samuelson

People prefer to be with people like themselves. For all the celebration of 'diversity,' it's sameness that dominates. Most people favor friendship with those who have similar backgrounds, interests and values. It makes for more shared experiences, easier conversations, and more comfortable silences. Despite many exceptions, the urge is nearly universal. It's human nature. — Robert J. Samuelson

What good does it do a black youth to know that an employer must pay him $2 an hour if the fact that he must be paid that amount is what keeps him from getting a job? — Paul A. Samuelson

In politics, there's a fine line between too much conviction and too little. — Robert J. Samuelson

I spent the four years I was an undergraduate working on the beach. And it wasn't because I was lazy; it was because my freshman class would go to a hundred different employers and wouldn't get a nibble. — Paul Samuelson

First, those who disagree with market efficiency simply assert that it stands to common sense that greater effort to get facts and greater acumen in analyzing those facts will pay off in better performance somehow measured. (By this logic, cure for cancer must have been found by 1955). — Paul Samuelson

Marshall's crime is to pretend to handle imperfect competition with tools only applicable to perfect competition. — Paul Samuelson

Self-deception ultimately explains Japan's plight. The Japanese have never accepted that change is in their interest - and not merely a response to U.S. criticism. — Paul Samuelson

We are like highly trained athletes, who never run a race. — Paul Samuelson

Mea culpa, mea culpa. MIT and Wharton and University of Chicago created the financial engineering instruments, which, like Samson and Delilah, blinded every CEO. They didn't realize the kind of leverage they were doing and they didn't understand when they were really creating a real profit or a fictitious one. — Paul Samuelson

An intriguing paradox of the 1990s is that it isn't called a decade of greed. — Paul Samuelson

I don't care very much for the People Magazine approach to applied economics. — Paul Samuelson

One intriguing subplot of the economic crisis is the failure of most economists to predict it. Here we have the most spectacular economic and financial crisis in decades - possibly since the Great Depression - and the one group that spends most of its waking hours analyzing the economy basically missed it. — Robert J. Samuelson

I hope each of us realizes, at least in part, what a rich blessing it is to be at BYU. We are better prepared to receive and achieve the wonderful advantages and opportunities that life has yet to offer us because of what has happened to us here. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Macroeconomics, even with all of our computers and with all of our information. is not an exact science and is incapable of being an exact science. — Paul Samuelson

When we begin to understand the magnitude of [the Messiah's] sacrifice and service to us individually and collectively, we then cannot consider anything else to be of more importance or to approach His significance in our lives. For most of us, this understanding does not come all at once and likely will not be fully complete during our mortal sojourn. We do know, however, that as we learn line upon line, our appreciation for the Savior's contributions will increase and our knowledge and assurance of their truthfulness will grow. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Characteristically, Samuelson intimidated those who questioned his techniques with the statement "Those who can, do science, others do methodology." If you knew math, you could "do science." This is reminiscent of psychoanalysts who silence their critics by accusing them of having trouble with their fathers. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Even if this advice to portfolio decision makers to drop dead is good advice, it obviously is not counsel that will be eagerly followed. Few people will commit suicide without a push. And fewer still will pay good money to be told to do what is against human nature and self-interest to do. — Paul Samuelson

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars. — Alice Hoffman

In his book, Samuelson grabs hold of Smith's wordplay and freebases meaning from it until a mere metaphor mutates into the economic doctrine that would define the shape and form of global finance for the remainder of the century, and beyond. — Anonymous

The consumer, so it is said, is the king each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done. — Paul Samuelson

Politicians like to tell people what they want to hear - and what they want to hear is what won't happen. — Paul Samuelson

While our institutional mission and destiny are not in doubt, how we each participate and understand our individual responsibilities requires constant attention, effort, and vigilance. BYU will progress and prosper, but our individual success is not guaranteed without our own personal best efforts and worthily received blessings. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Even fans of actively managed funds often concede that most other investors would be better off in index funds. But buoyed by abundant self-confidence, these folks aren't about to give up on actively managed funds themselves. A tad delusional? I think so. Picking the best-performing funds is 'like trying to predict the dice before you roll them down the craps table,' says an investment adviser in Boca Raton, FL. 'I can't do it. The public can't do it.' — Paul Samuelson

To prove that Wall Street is an early omen of movements still to come in GNP, commentators quote economic studies alleging that market downturns predicted four out of the last five recessions. That is an understatement. Wall Street indexes predicted nine out of the last five recessions! And its mistakes were beauties. — Paul Samuelson

Reasonable men are not reasonable when you're in the bubbles which have characterized capitalism since the beginning of time. — Paul Samuelson

Probably the only people left who think that economics deserves a Nobel Prize are economists. It confirms their conceit that they're doing 'science' rather than the less tidy task of observing the world and trying to make sense of it. This, after all, is done by mere historians, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and (heaven forbid) even journalists. Economists are loath to admit that they belong in such raffish company. — Robert J. Samuelson

Sooner or later the Internet will become profitable. It's an old story played before by canals, railroads and automobiles. — Paul A. Samuelson

Of course not," Samuelson said. "Del Rio's got a place in Bel — Robert B. Parker

I couldn't reconcile what I was being taught at the university of Chicago, the lectures and the books I was being assigned, with what I knew to be true out in the streets. — Paul Samuelson

The appeal to the intellectually insecure is also more important than it might seem. Because economics touches so much of life, everyone wants to have an opinion. Yet the kind of economics covered in the textbooks is a technical subject that many people find hard to follow. How reassuring, then, to be told that it is all irrelevant
that all you really need to know are a few simple ideas! Quite a few supply-siders have created for themselves a wonderful alternative intellectual history in which John Maynard Keynes was a fraud, Paul Samuelson and even Milton Friedman are fools, and the true line of deep economic thought runs from Adam Smith through obscure turn-of-the-century Austrians straight to them. — Paul Krugman

It isn't that greed's increased. What's increased is the realization that you've got a free field to reach out for what you'd like to do. — Paul Samuelson

Economists have much to be humble about. — Paul Samuelson

Second, they [those who disagree with market efficiency] always claim they know a man, a bank, or a fund that does do better. Alas, anecdotes are not science. And once Wharton School dissertations seek to quantify the performers, these have a tendency to evaporate into the air - or, at least, into statistically insignificant t-statistics. — Paul Samuelson

Econometrics may be defined as the quantitative analysis of actual economic phenomena based on the concurrent development of theory and observation, related by appropriate methods of inference. — Paul Samuelson

Because our Father in Heaven and His Son, Jesus Christ, are perfect, our dearest aspiration is to become like Them and eventually achieve the perfection that is possible and promised, even though each of us has such a long way to go. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Jesus Christ was the only one capable of performing the magnificent Atonement because He was the only perfect man and the Only Begotten Son of God the Father. He received His commission for this essential work from His Father before the world was established. His perfect mortal life devoid of sin, the shedding of His blood, His suffering in the garden and upon the cross, His voluntary death, and the Resurrection of His body from the tomb made possible a full Atonement for people of every generation and time. — Cecil O. Samuelson

Kelsoism is not accepted by modern scientific economics as a valid and fruitful analysis of the distribution of income but rather it is regarded as an amateurish and cranky fad. — Paul Samuelson

Profits are the lifeblood of the economic system, the magic elixir upon which progress and all good things depend ultimately. But one man's lifeblood is another man's cancer. — Paul Samuelson

In this age of specialization, I sometimes think of myself as the last 'generalist' in economics, with interests that range from mathematical economics down to current financial journalism. My real interests are research and teaching ... — Paul Samuelson

We may have much that worries us, and we may find many reasons to be concerned. Yet, as President Spencer W. Kimball observed, peace and the Savior's doctrine of forgiveness are inseparably connected: The essence of forgiveness is that it brings peace to the previously anxious, restless, frustrated, perhaps tormented soul. — Cecil O. Samuelson

You live in a world where economic, political, and social conditions can be extremely dark and depressing without the hope and knowledge of Christ's mission and message. — Sharon G. Samuelson

Two factors explain our success. One, MIT's renaissance after World War II as a federally supported research resource. Two, the mathematical revolution in macro- and micro-economic theory and statistics. This was overdue and inevitable, MIT was the logical place for it to flourish. — Paul Samuelson

This message (that attempting to beat the market is futile) can never be sold on Wall Street because it is in effect telling stock analysts to drop dead. — Paul Samuelson

Forsake search for needles that are so very small in haystacks that are so very large. — Paul Samuelson

Investing is like waiting for paint dry and grass grow so. If you like fun, let handle 800 USD and headed to Las Vegas — Paul Samuelson