Kenneth Boulding quotes - page 2

One of the most important skills of the economist, therefore, is that of simplification of the model. Two important methods of simplification have been developed by economists. One is the method of partial equilibrium analysis (or microeconomics), generally associated with the name of Alfred Marshall and the other is the method of aggregation (or macro-economics), associated with the name of John Maynard Keynes. (Kenneth Boulding)
Any attempt to reduce the complex properties of biological organisms or of nervous systems or of human brains to simple physical and chemical systems is foolish. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
[Even the mechanism can be endowed with an image. Thus] the thermostat has an image of the outside world in the shape of information regarding its temperature. It has also a value system in the sense of the ideal temperature at which it is set. Its behavior is directed towards the receipt of information which will bring its image and its value systems together. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The social dynamics of human history, even more than that of biological evolution, illustrate the fundamental principle of ecological evolution - that everything depends on everything else. The nine elements that we have described in societal evolution of the three families of phenotypes - the phyla of things, organizations and people, the genetic bases in knowledge operating through energy and materials to produce phenotypes, and the three bonding relations of threat, integration and exchange - all interact on each other. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Almost every organization... exhibits two faces - a smiling face which it turns toward its members and a frowning face which it turns to the world outside. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The organization of science into disciplines sets up a series of ghettos with remarkable distances of artificial social space between them. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The discounting presumably is to be done for each period of time at that rate of interest which represents the alternative cost of employing capital in the occupation in question; that is, at the rate which the entrepreneur could obtain in other investments. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
[The loss- of-strength gradient is] the degree to which military and political power diminishes as we move a unit distance away from its home base. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
If the society toward which we are developing is not to be a nightmare of exhaustion, we must use the interlude of the present era to develop a new technology which is based on a circular flow of materials such that the only sources of man's provisions will be his own waste products. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Economics, we learn in the history of thought, only became a science by escaping from the casuistry and moralizing of medieval thought. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
It is absurd to suppose we can think of nature as a system apart from knowledge, for it is knowledge that is increasingly determining the course of nature. (Kenneth Boulding)
It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns - that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Conflict may be defined as a situation of competition in which the parties are aware of the incompatibility of potential future positions, and in which each party wishes to occupy a position that is incompatible with the wishes of the other. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
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. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Justification, in terms of the broadening of freedom, for any particular form of institution of property must be argued in terms of whether the losses caused by the restrictions imposed are greater or less than the gains derived from the elimination of costly conflict. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
[There will be movement toward] behavioral economics... [which] involves study of those aspects of men's images, or cognitive and affective structures that are more relevant to economic decisions. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The controversy as to whether socialism is possible has been settled by the fact that it exists, and it is a fundamental axiom of my philosophy, at any rate, that anything that exists, is possible. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The most fundamental form of integrative power is the power of love. (Kenneth Boulding)
[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. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
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. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
Nothing fails like success, because we do not learn anything from it. We only learn from failure, but we do not always learn the right things from failure. If there is a failure of expectations, that is, if the messages that we receive are not the same as those we expected, we can make three possible inferences. View quote
Kenneth Boulding
The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market... the higher the black market price. View quote
Kenneth Boulding