Paul Samuelson quotes - page 3

Paul Samuelson was an influential American economist and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. His work laid the foundations for modern economic theory and shaped academic economics in the 20th century. He played a key role in popularizing Keynesian economics and advancing mathematical approaches in the field. Here are 78 of his quotes:

Scholars still debate whether Columbus brought syphilis to the New World or vice versa. But it cannot be doubted that the 2008 world meltdown carries on its label the words Made in America.

Paul Samuelson

I reproach myself for a gross error. But I would reproach myself more if I had persisted in an error after observations revealed it clearly to be that. I made a deal of money in the late 1940s on the bull side, ignoring Satchel Paige's advice to Lot's wife, "Never look back.” Rather I would advocate Samuelson's Law: "Always look back. You may learn something from your residuals. Usually one's forecasts are not so good as one remembers them; the difference may be instructive.” The dictum "If you must forecast, forecast often,” is neither a joke nor a confession of impotence. It is a recognition of the primacy of brute fact over pretty theory. That part of the future that cannot be related to the present's past is precisely what science cannot hope to capture. Fortunately, there is plenty of work for science to do, plenty of scientific tasks not yet done.

Paul Samuelson

A later writer, such as Leijonhufvud, I knew to have it wrong, when he later argued the merits of Keynes's subtle intuitions and downplayed the various (identical!) mathematical versions of The General Theory. The so-called 1937 Hicks or later Hicks–Hansen IS–LM diagram will do as an example for the debate.

Paul Samuelson

I would guess that most MIT Ph. D.'s since 1980 might deem themselves not to be "Keynesians.” But they, and modern economists everywhere, do use models like those of Samuelson, Modigliani, Solow, and Tobin. Professor Martin Feldstein, my Harvard neighbor, complained at the 350th Anniversary of Harvard that Keynesians had tried to poison his sophomore mind against saving. Tobin and I on the same panel took this amiss, since both of us since 1955 had been favoring a "neoclassical synthesis,” in which full employment with an austere fiscal budget would add to capital formation in preparation for a coming demographic turnaround.

Paul Samuelson

My notion of a fruitful economic science would be that it can help us explain and understand the course of actual economic history. A scholar who seriously addresses commentary on contemporary monthly and yearly events is, in this view, practicing the study of history-history in its most contemporary time phasing.

Paul Samuelson

When I once called myself a "Sunday painter” dabbling in stochastic finance, that was not meant to belittle finance theory as a branch of serious economic theory. Such a peculiar view was expressed again and again by the late Milton Friedman, a dizzy view that I still find incomprehensible.

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

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

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

Paul Samuelson

Avoiding inflation is not an absolute imperative but rather is one of a number of conflicting goals that we must pursue and that we may often have to compromise.

Paul Samuelson

It is indeed true that the stock market can forecast the business cycle.

Paul Samuelson

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

Paul Samuelson

My belief is that nothing that can be expressed by mathematics cannot be expressed by careful use of literary words.

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

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

The remarkable fact is not how much government does to control economic activity, but how much it does not do.

Paul Samuelson

The history of the twentieth century - America's century! - has been pretty much a history of rising prices.

Paul Samuelson

There is really nothing more pathetic than to have an economist or a retired engineer try to force analogies between the concepts of physics and the concepts of economics.

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

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

Paul's work combined breadth and intensity. On the one hand, his structures were grounded in a very wide knowledge of the nature of mathematical systems used to describe natural phenomena. On the other, he studied individual questions in economics, sometimes at a very detailed level.

Paul Samuelson

Samuelson says I was wrong and he was right, and he froths at the mouth when people talk about the lighthouse example. He says Coase is wrong; he doesn't overcome the free rider problem. Who are the free riders? The foreign ships going past the British coast which do not call at a British port. Using Samuelson's approach, what do you do? Do you ask the foreign governments to give you a subsidy? Do you tax people in Britain because the foreign ships are getting help without paying for it? What do you do? My approach is to compare the alternatives. People like Samuelson like to set up a perfect world and say that the market does not bring us to this point and imply that the government should do something. They stop their analysis at that point.

Paul Samuelson