Kenneth Boulding quotes

Kenneth Boulding was a British-American economist, educator, and systems scientist known for his interdisciplinary approach to the social sciences. His work spanned economics, peace research, and the study of complex systems. He made significant contributions to understanding human behavior in economic and social contexts. Here are 154 of his quotes:

The process of consumption... is the final act in the economic drama.

Kenneth Boulding

The social system tends to be dominated by images... especially of the future, which act cybernetically, constantly guided by perceived divergences between the real and the ideal.

Kenneth Boulding

[The consumer is] the supreme mover of economic order... for whom all goods are made and towards whom all economic activity is directed.

Kenneth Boulding

Human artifacts not only include material structures and objects, such as buildings, machines, and automobiles, but they also include organizations, organizational structures like extended families . . . tribes, nations, corporations, churches, political parties, governments, and so on. Some of these may grow unconsciously, but they all originate and are sustained by the images in the human mind.

Kenneth Boulding

One reason why the progressive state is 'cheerful' is that social conflict is diminished by it.

Kenneth Boulding

Don't go to great trouble to optimize something that never should be done at all. Aim to enhance total systems properties, such as creativity, stability, diversity, resilience, and sustainability–whether they are easily measured or not.

Kenneth Boulding

Reality, in its quantitative aspect, must be considered as a system of populations... The general study of the equilibria and dynamics of populations seems to have no name; but as it has probably reached its highest development in the biological study known as 'ecology,' this name may well be given to it.

Kenneth Boulding

Production functions involving only land, labor and capital... never work and never explain economic development.

Kenneth Boulding

The evolutionary vision is agnostic in regard to systems in the universe of greater complexity than those of which human beings have clear knowledge. It recognizes aesthetic, moral, and religious ideas and experiences as a species, in this case of mental structures or of images, which clearly interacts with other species in the world's great' ecosystem.

Kenneth Boulding

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.

Kenneth Boulding

The only religion that still demands human sacrifice is nationalism.

Kenneth Boulding

The human condition can almost be summed up in the observation that, whereas all experiences are of the past, all decisions are about the future. It is the great task of human knowledge to bridge this gap and to find those patterns in the past which can be projected into the future as realistic images.

Kenneth Boulding

The world moves into the future as a result of decisions, not as a result of plans. Plans are significant only insofar as they affect decisions.

Kenneth Boulding

Equilibrium is a figment of the human imagination.

Kenneth Boulding

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

Kenneth Boulding

We should always bear in mind that numbers represent a simplification of reality.

Kenneth Boulding

The concept of a value-free science is absurd.

Kenneth Boulding

Accounting for the most part, remains a legalistic and traditional practice, almost immune to self-criticism by scientific methods.

Kenneth Boulding

General Systems Theory is a name which has come into use to describe a level of theoretical model-building which lies somewhere between the highly generalized constructions of pure mathematics and the specific theories of the specialized disciplines. Mathematics attempts to organize highly general relationships into a coherent system, a system however which does not have any necessary connections with the "real" world around us. It studies all thinkable relationships abstracted from any concrete situation or body of empirical knowledge.

Kenneth Boulding

The very act of thinking about power in our lives and experiences creates a process of revelation and self-analysis that may even make us look at ourselves in a new light... thinking about power and its complex manifestations may not simply lead to a better understanding of the abstract complexities of society, but may have an effect on one‟s own image and identity. Perhaps a warning label should be placed on the cover...

Kenneth Boulding

Knowledge exists in minds, not in books. Before what has been found can be used by practitioners, someone must organize it, integrate it, extract the message.

Kenneth Boulding

Political conflict rests to a very large extent on a universal ignorance of consequences, as the people who are benefited by any particular act or policy are rarely those who struggled for it, and the people who are injured are rarely those who opposed it.

Kenneth Boulding