Because of his capacity for abstract communications and language and his ability to enter in imagination into the lives of others, man is able to build organizations of a size and complexity far beyond those of the lower animals.

The thing that distinguishes social systems from physical or even biological systems is their incomparable (and embarrassing) richness in special cases. Generalizations in the social sciences are mere pathways which lead through a riotous forest of individual trees, each a species unto itself. The social scientist who loses this sense of the essential individuality and uniqueness of each case is all too likely to make a solemn scientific ass of himself, especially if he thinks that his faceless generalizations are the equivalents of the rich vareity of the world.

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

The human experience can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all decisions are of the past, all decisions are about the future. The image of the future, therefore, is the key to all choice-oriented behavior. The character and quality of the images of the future which prevail in a society is therefore the most important clue to its overall dynamics.

There is no such thing as economics, only social science applied to economic problems.

Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.

Deciding under uncertainty is bad enough, but deciding under an illusion of certainty is catastrophic.