Portal:Business/Selected quote

''Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.''


 * &mdash;Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, 1765

''When national debts have once been accumulated to a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single instance of their having been fairly and completely paid. The liberation of the public revenue, if it has ever been brought about at all, has always been brought about by a bankruptcy; sometimes by an avowed one, but always by a real one, though frequently by a pretended payment. The raising of the denomination of the coin has been the most usual expedient by which a real public bankruptcy has been disguised under the appearance of a pretended payment.''


 * &mdash;Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776

''Can such a system conceivably deal with the problems we are now having to face? The answer is self-evident: greed and envy demand continuous and limitless economic growth of a material kind, without proper regard for conservation, and this type of growth cannot possibly fit into a finite environment. We must therefore study the essential nature of the private enterprise system and the possibilities of evolving an alternative system which might fit the new situation.''


 * &mdash;E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, 1973

The social object of skilled investment should be to defeat the dark forces of time and ignorance which envelope our future.


 * &mdash;John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, 1936

''The problems raised by a conscious direction of economic affairs on a national scale inevitably assume even greater dimensions when the same is attempted internationally. The conflict between planning and freedom cannot but become more serious as the similarity of standards and values among those submitted to a unitary plan diminishes.''


 * &mdash;Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, 1944

The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.


 * &mdash;Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798

The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent.


 * &mdash;Anders Chydenius, The National Gain, 1765

All varieties of interference with the market phenomena not only fail to achieve the ends aimed at by their authors and supporters, but bring about a state of affairs which - from the point of view of their authors' and advocates valuations - is less desirable than the previous state of affairs which they were designed to alter.


 * &mdash;Ludwig von Mises

It is almost a cliché to describe India as rich in institutional infrastructure and poor in physical infrastructure.
 * &mdash;Paliniappan Chidambaram

If we stop thinking of the poor as victims, or as a burden, and start recognising them as resilient and creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.
 * &mdash;C K Prahalad

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.
 * &mdash;John Kenneth Galbraith

''It has long been my view that there is no economic process or problem that cannot be put in clear language - can not be made accessible to the literate and interested reader. Such effect does not, however, justify error or oversimplification.''
 * &mdash;John Kenneth Galbraith, "A Journey Through Economic Time".