Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.

[The notion of equilibrium] is a notion which can be employed usefully in varying degrees of looseness. It is an absolutely indispensable part of the toolbag of the economist and one which he can often contribute usefully to other sciences which are occasionally apt to get lost in the trackless exfoliations of purely dynamic systems.

The future is bound to surprise us, but we don't have to be dumbfounded.

Economists are like computers. They need to have facts punched into them.

Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought.

Perhaps the most difficult ethical problem of the scientific community arises not so much from conflict with other subcultures as from its own success. Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.

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.